Making History
Content taken from The President's Report, "Investing in Our Community"Fueled by a big grant, the Center for Art and Community Partnerships has rolled out an innovative strategy to engage its Mission Hill neighbors in the visual arts and spark exciting new collaborations.
It's not every day that a foundation contacts a college and invites them to apply for a big grant. But such was the case in April 2010 when the $3.1 billion Kresge Foundation invited MassArt and just fourteen other colleges and universities to apply for two-year $200,000 grants to expand their "exemplary community arts and community-building programs."
MassArt received the invitation for its work through the Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP), founded by President Sloan in 2004 to create more opportunities for MassArt to team up with local organizations on art-based projects. In September 2009, CACP launched a pilot project called Neighborhood Art Zone, which delivered a variety of community projects involving students, faculty, and alumni focused entirely within the Mission Hill and Lower Roxbury neighborhoods. In the grant application, CACP laid out an innovative plan to broaden the program, and the Kresge Foundation liked what they read. In May of 2010, we learned the good news - MassArt was one of only seven colleges in the country to win the award.
With the new funds, CACP and the local community are working on a new initiative will now bewhich includes the transformation of a new Ford transit van. MassArt's Industrial Design (ID) Professor Judith Anderson will work with a team of students to retrofit the multipurpose van, literally driving possibilities for art making outside the walls of any one institution. CACP will also continue to support existing projects in the neighborhoods such as a student-led exhibition crew for community artists, and after-school arts programming.
"The Kresge grant is huge for us because it allows us to have really focused and deeper conversations with our community partners," said Cecilia Mendez, the new director of CACP. "That will help us evaluate and improve how we work together with our partners, both inside and outside the college." Professor of Graphic Design Lisa Rosowsky, who has served on the CACP board, has incorporated community projects into her curriculum for nearly a decade. Although she doesn't focus on any specific neighborhood - instead, she typically favors public health projects - she does learn about partnership opportunities through CACP, which fields requests from organizations all across the city. As part of her upper-level print production course, Rosowsky's students completed an intensive 70-page guidebook aimed at recent immigrants for the Mayor's Office of New Bostonians.
In her inaugural remarks nearly fifteen years ago, President Sloan said that MassArt had "a significant responsibility to be a resource to our community as a center for art education." Now, as she nears retirement, she can rest assured knowing that that's a responsibility no one at MassArt takes lightly.