Arts Activities Support
ACHF Arts Access
Sabathani Community Center's goal is (1) to have forty to fifty youth of diverse different backgrounds to participate in the initiative to portray/create skits in which three to four distinct cultural/linguistic groups are portrayed; (2) for 90% of youth to increase literacy skills in the process of play involvement; and (3) for 100-120 parents and community members will attend performances to help gain cultural awareness. Sabathani Community Center is dedicated to meeting the needs of our neighborhood residents. To achieve this, we train staff and leadership to continually evaluate and improve programming to suit the needs of the diverse community. All personnel involved in the project will evaluate our success with the following goal and objectives in mind.
The first outcome was that 30 youth had a better understanding of neighborhood diversity. The second, and perhaps, as important outcome, was that 30 youth were able to meet mentors and have a vision of what they can become in the future. The last important outcome was that we gained 12 key community leaders that aim to continue involvement with youth and educate them on community leadership. Did you achieve your artistic goals? The artistic goals of the project were to provide a platform for youth to discuss and welcome diversity as a life skill, and further, to empower the youth as leaders of diversity and engage the audiences. We accomplished this by providing 30 youth with the opportunity to explore the history of south Minneapolis neighborhood they live in and understand changes that have happened over the decades. Including about a dozen well-known community leaders, we accomplished this with a real pizzazz. What worked? What didn’t work? What were the strengths/challenges of your artistic process? Because we were unable to have Pancho Demmings as the host theater guide, we had to find other known personalities to support the youth and act as mentors in the program. We decided to change the approach (as we communicated, this also meant that we were postponing the performance from Summer 2016 to Spring 2017). In early 2016, we created a Community Room that highlighted famous area residents. Sharon Sayles Belton, Judge Pamela Alexander, Judge LaJuene Lange, Senator Jeff Hayden, Civil Rights Activist Rosita Blach and William Glanton took to the stage to join youth. What, if anything, would you do differently if you had the opportunity to repeat a similar project? We would do this same project again because both the youth and the adults were so greatly impacted. The adults loved that they were such heroes to the youth. The youth felt that these individuals were the highlight of the show and afterward, said "I'm going to be a judge when I grow up, I'm going to be a police officer, mayor, etc. If we did anything more, we would involve more adults and more youth as pairs. The concept of our play became that a youth would portray the public figure (for example, Sharon Sayles Belton, Pam Alexander, Jeff Hayden) when they were a youth growing up in South Minneapolis, and then, the real person would come out and talk about diversity, opportunity, and challenges in the neighborhood as it was in the past and currently. Did you successfully reach your intended community (i.e. audience, participants, artists, etc.), If not, why? Yes, we were able to include about 30 youth and 12 community leaders. We had scheduled the play practices so that we could include area programs like the Boys and Girls Club and students from Richard Green, but those programs decided not to participate, so we only had 30. To counter this, we opened it up to after school programs in our buildings and had some involvement there. In the above section, if the estimated Population(s) Benefiting was different than the actual Population(s) Benefitting, please explain why. The youth were impacted, as originally proposed. The youth were greatly impacted by being mentored by key community leaders including first female African American Mayor of Minneapolis, Sharon Sayles Belton. Famous lawyers and senators were there to discuss with youth, and youth really saw that they can become something great. Did your outreach efforts result in community diversity? If not, what would you do differently in the future? Yes, Sabathani Community Center represents community diversity. Not only did we have key African American leaders, but we had key Latino Civil Rights Activist Rosita Blach. We had tried to include key Somali leaders, but were unable to get the buy in we needed for the performance schedule. In what ways did you meet your goals for making your project open and accessible to all who might wish to participate? We put out fliers about the Community Showcase to share with The Boys and Girls Club, Richard Green Elementary, and Hosmer Library. They were invited to be involved and we created a schedule so that Boys and Girls club youth could join us.
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