Arts Learning

We grossly underestimated our reach in all cases. We had originally projected to work with 30 artists, but we quickly realized we needed to draw from a wider, more diverse pool of artists for our Panel Discussions and Community Meet-Ups if we were to equitably engage with the issues and communities for which we were holding space. Additionally, our Youth Workshops, originally slated to be taught by four pairs of artists, quickly became much larger endeavors as the needs of the schools and youth camp clarified, and more teaching artists were needed to maintain our good teacher-learner ratios and more representative exposure of both the kinds of art practiced in our community and also the demographics of the people practicing it (we finished at 54 artists engaged instead of our projected 30). We had originally planned for our Youth Workshops to engage with groups of 20 students each, but in discussions with the schools, we quickly found the need to engage with far more students and adapted to that. We entered multiple classrooms and gave professional performances to large numbers of students which were then used as jumping-off points for further engagement and learning (we finished at 1296 youth learners instead of our projected 80). We had projected that participation for our Adult Workshops would average 75% (up from 60% in our first 2 years). However, our workshops all were either 90% full or sold out, and participation in our Discussions and Meet-Ups nearly doubled from previous years! We account this to a more aggressively spreading the word through social media, a better organized newsletter, a more established presence, but perhaps most of all to an outreach effort rooted in going directly to communities that are often overlooked or sidelined and building intentional, two-way relationships. That approach also informed our outreach in working with teaching artists, specifically seeking out artists who are almost never given a public face, either because of who they are or what they do. Our very affordable prices were combined with an aggressive scholarship policy, trading a massive discount in exchange for "helping set up and load out with the instructors" (or, in other words, pay less for additional instruction time), and light food and drink provided on-site. This helped alleviate a lot of the traditional barriers preventing access to the arts, which was precisely our main goal as regards community. Of our teaching artists, more than half were women. The Asian-American, African-American and Latinx communities were represented among the teaching artists. This representation was important given the large numbers of women and people of color among our participants, especially our youth participants. Both our Apprentices were new to the technical theatre. One is a Latinx musician and the other a Hispanic visual artist, both of whom intend to use their new skills to support communities traditional theatre typically does not interact with. Technical Tools of the Trade held 8 workshops, 4 panels, 4 community meet-ups, and organized 2 apprenticeships. We served 1296 youth learners, 181 adult learners, and 54 artists. Of the participants that completed surveys, 96% of adult learners and 79% of youth learners reported that their skill level or community engagement was improved by Tech Tools programming for a total of 83% improvement program wide.