affinities (weaver, elsewhere, public art)
This afternoon, 15 Weaver High School students will come over to Elsewhere for a 2 hour after school program exploring public art and leadership. We decided to lead this program for a few reasons.
#1: It seems timely considering that Chris Lineberry, Elsewhere’s first intern (joining us in 2004), Weaver student who grew (and grew and grew) from orchestra kid to visual arts genius and animation wizard, here known as “king of the roustabouts”, just took off to college for the Kansas City Art Institute. His participation coincided with a group of Weaver students who were absolutely instrumental in building Elsewhere from a thrift store to a museum infrastructure from 2005 to the present—Brian Dunsmore, Mike Lees, and the notorius Chelsea Whitton (honey). Needless to say, we have an affinity for this school, which helped us by hosting these brilliant students and individuals so nearby.
#2: Downtown Greensboro is changing, and art, especially public art, is in the forefront of the minds of many community leaders, from The United Arts Council, to the Community Foundation of Greensboro’s Public Art Endowment, to many other arts entrepreneurs and innovators. There is an exceptional faith in Greenboro that art can bind, transform, and connect our community, and we are excited to participate in that dialogue, while introducing concepts that ensure that that art and cultural desires emerge from within the communities that are already here. Elsewhere is committed to realizing the capacity of pre-existing resources—resources that we already have that sometimes go under-recognized or under-valued by the communities in which they exist. The artist as producer simply makes those connections visible to the community at large, endlessly discovering cultural phenomena already in-action and at-play. We are excited to exchange with students about these concepts, about how art is always right in front of you, possible anywhere, where ever you are. We’re interested in art that builds communities, and Weaver students, our neighbors, are great collaborative partners in bringing new inspiration to the community about ways to guide and lead its growth.
#3: Correspondence and coherence. We’re doing lots of projects that have a public component this year, and this is a perfect opportunity to interweave education into our pre-existing programming. Our CITY event series and SEA (South Elm Alliance), brought to you by the United Arts Council’s PTICA (Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts) and the Building Stronger Neighborhoods of the Community Foundation, has been inviting neighbors to participate in our CITY game and other related activities. CITY is a performance game that transforms our museum into an urban environment, complete with a button currency system, various shifting institutions, and character mayhem. CITY often brings the real problems ongoing outside the museum and community into a fictional realm, and explores the possibility of that fiction to impact the larger reality. SEA (the South Elm Alliance) was formed in conjunction with CITY as a means for preserving and connecting our South Elm Neighborhood through creative exchanges. SEA has put on many projects this season, including the “free coffee cafe”, screen-printing with our neighbors, and participating in the July 4th parade. Now, the Weaver program has an incredible opportunity to connect students with these initiatives, and growing initiatives like our Mural project with Action Greensboro and our Warhol Fundraiser, which will have a public component no matter how private it gets.
#4: Elsewhere loves learning by doing. We are all students of serious play, from the visiting artists to our long term staff. The class will think about historical concepts, and then put them into practice. We’ll never be far away from the doing of learning. Fantastic.
