Arts Learning

The Art Bus successfully reached the intended community we planned to serve by holding The Art Bus sessions at Mount Airy Hi-Rise, a low-income, multi-family housing complex made up primarily of Somali, Hispanic and African-American families in downtown St Paul. Our outreach efforts were held at the community center and involved signing up participants and obtaining permission slips from parents and guardians. By holding the signup sessions after school we tried to make The Art Bus accessible to the entire youth population at Mount Airy. We used poster boards with pictures of the bus and specially designed signup sheets. These were posted on the community board and individuals at the front desk were available to provide materials and direct any questions to Beth Pacunas, Resident Initiatives Department at Saint Paul Public Housing and Ubax Ali, a Somali community center coordinator. The demographic makeup of Mount Airy Hi-Rise was an ideal fit for the population we wished to serve. Because of our community partnership with Saint Paul Public Schools, we were provided with valuable resources and contacts with Cultural Specialists in the Office of Family Engagement and Community Partnerships. The specialists from Saint Paul Public Schools identified Mount Airy Hi-Rise as a site that would greatly benefit from Art Bus programming and we achieved our goal of reaching underserved diverse populations. Eighteen participants attended 10 art classes held from 9/17/2016 to 11/19/2016, taught by 4 artist-mentors. Participants learned that art-making can be a vehicle for self-expression through classroom sharing, identifying expressive capabilities of mediums and subject matter. Young artists demonstrated interest in art concepts learned in class by using sketchbooks to produce artwork at home.