UMC Blog

Last week my fellow VISTA, Kristen Cothran, wrote My Work as a VISTA: Creating New Education Tools for the Community about the role of an AmeriCorps VISTA. I’d like to expand upon her explanation by further sharing what it means to be a VISTA, and the breadth of work we do.

To review, a VISTA is a Volunteer in Service to America. The VISTA program is administered by AmeriCorps, a public/private partnership that addresses critical needs in the community. Specifically, the VISTA program is focused on ending poverty in America. VISTAs do this by taking a year assignment where we live in poverty while building capacity at our assigned sites.

We are able to build capacity by strengthening the programs and departments we work in. We do so with a focus on leaving behind projects and systems that can continue without our involvement. This is accomplished through: utilizing volunteers, raising funds, and building partnerships.

My work as a VISTA has been within the ArtWorks 945 program. ArtWorks 945 is an outreach program that uses art as a way to connect with our homeless neighbors and assist them in their journey towards housing. One integral component of ArtWorks 945 is our partnerships that enable us to have a more vibrant program. In turn, we can better serve our neighbors and strengthen our ties to the community. One exciting partnership that I’ve helped to foster is with UNC Charlotte Center City. Over the course of the last five months we have worked together on five different events, engaged 50 volunteers, and involved at least six other organizations…and we’re just getting started!

Our most recent project started when UNC Charlotte Center City invited us to be involved in their latest exhibit, “Favelas: Architecture of Survival.” Their main gallery is currently featuring large format photographs of Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas, or shanty towns. They were shot by Brazilian photographer Pedro Lobo, and highlight the ingenuity and resilience of people living in poverty half a world away. Lobo’s work inspired us to examine what is happening here in Charlotte, and led us to question how architecture can be the intervention that ends homelessness for our 2,418 homeless neighbors.

As a problem solving exercise ArtWorks 945 participants spent two sessions collaborating with the School of Architecture and Master of Urban Design students. Our artists acted as clients while the students listened to their needs and dreams, and worked to create an individual housing solution that occupies a 10’x10’ footprint and has no running water or electricity. The final product, 2D renderings by ArtWorks 945 artists and 3D models by the students, are displayed side by side as a compliment to Lobo’s photographs.

This partnership didn’t just recognize our neighbors’ struggles, it highlighted the creativity and effort they put forth in being a part of the conversation about housing and homelessness in our community. In turn, it was validating when over 200 community members came to together at last Friday’s opening celebration. They shared their awe, interest, anger, and support for the challenges we all face in our effort to end homelessness. As a VISTA, I’m proud to have been a part of building a bridge to further this conversation.

A special thanks to the UNC Charlotte Center City staff. We look forward to our next event together, the Soccer Challenge, on April 27^th.

“Favelas: Architecture of Survival” runs through May 30 at UNC Charlotte Center City. More info can be found at
http://centercity.uncc.edu/projective-eye-art-gallery

The Maxwell House Drops of Good Renovation video for Urban Ministry Center has been posted!

In mid-June, I was selected by the Arts & Science Council to attend the Americans for the Arts Conference (AFTA) in San Antonio, Texas. The experience was the perfection punctuation as I wrapped up my year of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA with UMC’s ArtWorks 945 program. For the past year I had worked on building capacity within the program by fostering partnerships, engaging volunteers, and raising funds. This all sounds dandy, but the questions I often get are, “Why art? What does that have to do with homelessness?”

The answer for our program, and the Urban Ministry Center as a whole is COMMUNITY. ArtWorks 945 not only provides a safe, positive, and productive place for community to be built with our neighbors, it is one of UMC’s many arms that reach out and positively affect the greater Charlotte community. It is only because of our connectedness to individuals, volunteers, churches, businesses, and other institutions that we are able to take on the huge job of ending homelessness in Charlotte.

The AFTA conference highlighted that the arts exist in a similar realm where connectedness and collaboration is essential. It is said that when the arts form a firing squad, they form a circle. It is up to us as leaders to instead create a new vision where our links together allow us to be stronger and more responsive. With coordinated advocacy and partnership, our strength is not in the single threads of our separate work, but in the rich fabric we weave together. Over the years ArtWorks has cultivated partnerships with over 70 community partners, while UMC has worked with hundreds more. Without this approach our huge task would be unthinkable, and now I know that on a personal level I have to move forward with intentional action to add more threads to our fabric.

Picture: Here I am in  front of the “La Antorcha de la Amistad” otherwise known as the “Torch of Friendship.”  It is a symbol of bi-lateral cooperation between Mexico and the US, but I couldn’t think of a better photo to also illustrate the idea of collaboration!

Thank you to the Arts & Science Council for granting an Emerging Leader in the Arts Award to attend the 2012 Americans for the Arts Conference.

As I watched the Pilobolus performance on Monday I actually thought to myself, “this is surreal.” Then I remembered, that was the whole point. I was with ArtWorks artists who have been studying surrealism and, with financial assistance from the Arts and Science Council, came with open minds to see surrealism in action—in beautiful, strong, curious movement.

It’s a great example of why the ArtWorks program is making such an impact on people’s lives. They are providing more than just space to create, they are offering growth. Before attending Pilobolus, the students learned about the history and ideas of surrealism. Life skills of personal discovery, awareness, collaboration, and communication were examined through activities of automatic writing and drawing, dream journaling, and drawing games. The lessons were meant to prepare participants to fully experience and appreciate the live performance, and to help strengthen the connections made between the art forms of dance, theatre, and visual arts, and the participants’ personal lives.

Today marked the last Surrealism lesson and the wrap up for the month. Exquisite Corpse is a game founded by the Surrealism movement where each person contributes a section of a drawing with some guidelines, but without seeing the others’ contribution to the same composition. The students did three sections, a head, torso, and legs, and then opened the paper to see the result. It amazed us all the way some things were disconnected, but connected at the same time. Very similar to the dance choreography of Pilobolus where the body does things that we never imagine and morphs to become something recognizable, yet completely new.

These activities led to acceptance of the new and unusual. Students who were initially skeptical and uncomfortable have become more trusting and embracing of new processes—a good lesson for all of us.