With these hands I can

​

“Art is a wound turned into light”- Georges Braque

 

As cultural bearers, we are more impactful together.To support each other and this efforts attempts to bring together black community, Chicano group, indigenous farmworkers, breast cancer survivors. In the creation, instagram as an example. intersectionality.

 

What does it mean for artist to come together

Those who allow themselves to identify as artists, creators and innovators often move in ways that others find very difficult to navigate. As an artist that has delved into multiple disciplines of art such as music, theatre, poetry, as well as other spaces such as social work, engineering, military, academia, and county work, I’ve notice there are some meaningful nuance and difference in how the communities centered around artistic identity allow themselves to come together. Not to say that they don’t have issues, but in many cases the level of collaborative engagement, identity acceptance and willingness work through challenges around conflict is often navigated with an appreciation for the differences, an acknowledgement of the strengths and a goal to get the best goal from everyone. 

 

In this collaboration, four artists came together to work with four different specific communities across different disciplines of engagement and artistic expression. The importance of this work is to show how we are able to come together to help combat the challenges that we as a community face amongst our range of diversity in identity as well as the challenges we face in our varied communities. The collaboration between these artists, seeks to examine the different modalities in which they decided to show up in their respective art forms to engage community and synthesize an understanding of how they went about doing this work in order to provide toolkits that enable others go about creating similar opportunities for others to impact their community through an understanding of how to lean into their own approach. 

 

This collaboration from these artists shows how connected we are and that anyone can make an impact and a difference, especially when we find ways to come together. Unity can be expressed in many fashions. Artistic healers coming together to find solutions in ways to show up for community is a prime example of the beauty of diversity and how we are not as disconnected as we think we are, when we focus on the goal of creating connection, understanding identity and the beauty & benefit of building communal and cultural healing and wealth. 

 

This  tailored framework focuses on the mechanism of change involved in creating communal cultural wealth. This toolkit is a living document created by specific target groups Latinx parents, African American men, AAPI men, undocumented Indigenous farmworkers  in various communities.  in low index areas (South San Diego, Native Reservations).  

 

These art based  support groups utilize Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and art processing to encourage a growth mindset and community engagement. The information gleaned from the pilot groups  resulted in a cross-pollination campaign in which we disseminate the information through written, social media, and various other creative mediums (poetry, dance, video, murals, site specific installation). The artwork further serves as a way to cross pollinate information to the larger masses while providing visibility to these specific groups. The goal is to train community leaders from the pilot groups in hopes that they will continue to disseminate this knowledge based in social justice and communal mental health. 

 

Collaborators: These community venues include local libraries, theatre spaces, a senior center and nonprofits as well as other collaborations such as Centro cultural de la Raza, universities, museums,  and FSBN sites.