Created to Be Arts: A Black/BIPOC led art and creativity workshop series for youth and families
Jena Holliday is launching Created to Be Arts - a Black/BIPOC led creative art program that offers workshops for youth and families. The program will provide classes in visual art, illustration, ans introduce students to other art mediums. Classes will explore work from historic and current BIPOC artists. This program's purpose is to cultivate a safe space for BIPOC youth to experience a collaborative, supportive home for creativity and to thrive through access to art resources and tools.
2022-2023 Cultural Heritage and Community Identity Grants - Spring 2022
-Youth and families maintain a connection to local Minnesota Black artist through art workshops
-Youth and families connect to local Minnesota Black/BIPOC communities through art
-Students will gain interest and knowledge of various art mediums and fundamentals within each workshop
-Students will learn skills and gain new resources in a Black/BIPOC led space to express themselves through art
-Students will be inspired to create art from various mediums through learning new art techniques and ideas
-Public community members who see the work will engage with Black/BIPOC art and creative expression and get the opportunity to listen and learn
The project for Created to Be Arts did have some delays in starting, as we had to wait for funding to begin. We did not receive funding until November 18th, 2022. This delayed our initial plans but the project is still moving along steadily.So far we have begun research and developing of the content and curriculum for the six workshops in the program. I am working on creating a poll to local parents around some of the class ideas we are brainstorming. We are working with our local network and direct community that consists of many within our target reach and audience to gather insight and feedback that might help us make the classes more impactful for a youth artists. I have also connected with a few local artists that have agreed to help co-facilitate if needed for workshops and am still finalizing the final curriculum to be completed by end of February. Within the research and development, we are seeing that we underestimated the amount of time it would take to create a curriculum. Initially we expected about 60 hours of research and already reached that and need through the end of February to finalize things. This will adjust our projected hours from 60 to 90 projected hours.
We have also started the development of the website that will be used to share the story of the project as well as classes and sign ups. That is underway and will likely not be finished until late March. Lastly, we have put down a deposit to secure the photographer/videographer for the classes/workshop and content needed for the website.
Because it is imperative that we hold these workshops through the spring/summer season we are still working diligently to stay close to the timelines we projected.; Created to Be Arts pilot program launched with BIPOC/Black led art workshops for youth and families spring/summer 2023.
We constructed a website and marketing initiatives through both video and photos for the program to be used for current and future programming. The program created workshops across the Twin Cities to cultivate a safe space for BIPOC youth to experience a collaborative, supportive home for creativity and to thrive through access to art resources and tools.
We did adjust the number of workshops we planned for the pilot, due to timing and underestimated costs in planning/materials, we had to adjust the number of classes and were able to host three various art classes and mini workshops for youth and adults within the budget. With these changes we also found that our estimated budgets for space rental, art supplies, and exhibit materials were lower than originally budgeted. We found that there was a need in additional support staff that could make up for the funds and adjusted the budget to apply the funds towards support staff (for planning and more hands on deck at workshops) and additional research (on post production strategy and review phase for the pilot program).
Our goal was to build and cultivate a safe space for BIPOC youth and families to be creative and participate in the arts and I believe we did that. After each session, we received feedback from participants to help determine if we were on track and what they might change for or need for future workshops.
N/A. We did have a slight overage (roughly $2) that was paid with personal funds.