Center Student Grants: Changing Lives Through the Arts
San Francisco, September 7, 2005
Community arts organizations rely on strong partnerships to address issues of social justice, diversity, equity, community, and education. Through the Center Student Grant program, the CCA Center for Art and Public Life helps students participate in such partnerships. Launched in 2002, the program funds projects that fourth-year and graduate-level students create themselves.
Working in close collaboration with a partnering community-based organization, students create art that is mutually beneficial and responsive to its particular community setting, including the cultural expressions of diverse ethnic and racial groups.
Projects in the Bay Area
For two years beginning in 2002, CCA students Unity Lewis, David Battaglia, and Bayete Ross-Smith partnered with the Far West School in Oakland to create a course that explored hip-hop as a cultural and artistic movement, examining its social norms, values, politics, history, and practice.
The project "allowed me to connect with the community through artistic practice and be creative in a way that was actually relevant to the world," said Ross-Smith. "My experience helped me think about my visual language and how to communicate my ideas artistically to a broader spectrum of viewers."
Other projects working with diverse youth have ranged from a media literacy course taught at the Far West School to a writing and art workshop for Arab and Muslim youth introduced at the Arab Cultural and Community Center in San Francisco.
Projects Abroad
Many of the students work internationally—with two projects in Mexico, one in El Salvador, and one in Ecuador—to accomplish artistic and community building goals that might be impossible otherwise. Over the past summer, students Gardner Goetze, Thia Jennings, Daniel Panko, and Christina Samuelson traveled to El Salvador to engage in art making with the town of Perquin, a community in dire need of additional resources. They designed individual projects while partnering with the School of the Arts/Open Studio, a program run by CCA faculty member Claudia Bernardi, developed to facilitate, implement, and teach art projects reaching children and adults living in Morazán, El Salvador.
In 2002, Jake Mackenzie led a team of volunteers to the remote community of Chacala in Nayarit, Mexico, to help rebuild their hurricane-damaged beachfront and begin the process of creating a community center. After graduating from CCA, Mackenzie was hired to continue his work on the project. The first building of the community center opened in March 2004.
Miranda Bergman's project, launched in 2004 at a junior high school in Yelapa, Mexico, engaged students, parents, and the village community in the creation of a large, colorful mural at the school. By training teachers in the mural-making process, successive years of students can enjoy the experience, creating a sustainable impact. Bergman has stayed in close contact with the school and recollects, "The project planted some deep seeds of connection that continue to sprout. While we were there, besides working with the youth of the Escuela Telesecondaria to paint their wonderful mural about ecology, we (my assistant Susy Lundy and I) were named the Madrinas (Godmothers) of the graduating class." In Mexican culture, that honor is not taken lightly and implies an ongoing relationship.
More Information
For more information, please contact Jason Engelund at 510.594.3765 or jengelund@cca.edu, or visit the Center's website.
The Center Student Grants program receives generous support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Fundable projects are identified through a highly selective application process for which students must provide a detailed plan, budget, and relevant experience.
By Erica Holt
Yelapa Community Mural Project