Project Grant

A 40 piece art show at Whit Gallery focusing on the beauty and wonderment of natural habitats. There will be live music, guest speakers, poets.; One of the benefits for artists applying to be in this show is it will give 30 artists an opportunity to have their work shown at the Whit Gallery, and possibly win an award. Winners will be publicized giving the participants recognition. An additional 10 pieces will go to the Good Earth Coop giving a total of 40 artists a chance to be in this show. This event is to provide for artists an opportunity to exhibit a piece that focuses on the envirnment. It is hoped that this experience will encourage artists to do more work focused on the envirnment, as well as keep up on community deveopment in regards to envirnmental concerns. In the completion of this exhibit, we anticipate that this will have a lasting effect, igniting future energetic conversation around the topics of global warming and the environment. In order to evaluate this rather qualitative and challenging metric, we will utilize social media platforms and simple surveying tools in our programming. The main goal of this event is to encourage artists to go beyond their comfort zones and use their work to promote better care of the evironment. We hope that this show inspires and encourages participants to not only enjoy and appreciate the art, but to take individual action to curb global warming. It is also to inform the community of what is going on at a national level and what each person can do to encourage further awareness in this community. The evaluation plan will be a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The quantitative tools will include social media impressions. physical and online participation, and added support from local leadership and organizations.; The evaluation plan will be a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The quantitative tools will include social media impressions. physical and online participation, and added support from local leadership and organizations. Qualitative evaluation will include before and after reflection papers by students, onsite "How Might We" interactive prompts at the gallery and coop, and online prompts that encourage social media engagement. How many people view the art show at the gallery and coop will also be used to measure the success of the event. There will be a survey that will be handed out at the art show event and left out for a month at Whit gallery . Participants will be encouraged to fill it out and give their opinion of the event. The survey results will be tallied and results will be used for the purpose of future art shows and guest speakers in the Saint Cloud area. The second method of measuring the success of the project is the number of students and adults who attend the guest speakers presentation on the CSBSJU Campus.This will be used to measure the interest in the topic and concern of the community. In partnership with the Environmental Studies Department, students will be asked to reflect on how the arts can be used to promote awareness of global warming in their classes before and after the event. Then, to reverse this reflection, we will engage with the CSBSJU art department students to reflect on the exchange between sectors of science and art. Also how many people follow up by watching a zoom presentation of the guest speaker event will be used to measure interest in the topic. People will be encouraged to go downtown to see the show at the gallery and guest speaker, reflecting on the importance of the arts as a means to promote the well being of the environment in this community, and beyond. We will specifically measure the following: 1. The impact of presentation, the speakers and participants expressing their concerns for the environment 2. Measuring the effects the art show has on topic for participants 3. Measuring how the art show and overall program affects the concern of participants and policy of our local commu