Community Partner: Jubilee Arts Intern: Jimmy Li Site Supervisor: Nora Howell
What is the Jubilee Arts? Jubilee Arts is a community program providing arts classes to the residents of the Sandtown-Winchester, Upton, and surrounding neighborhoods in Baltimore.
" How and why do you communicate with people? My internship at Jubilee Arts has given me a wide range of experiences that deal with this very question.
Jubilee Arts runs a summer program called Art @ Work, which hires youth to work with lead artists to paint community designed murals. It has an explicit goal of exposing youth to employment opportunities in the arts, empowering youth to improve their community organizing and job skills, and creating engagement between artists, youth, and the community. It ' s a huge mission, and it ' s an ideal that deals fundamentally with the question of communication.
First of all, a community is large. How do you organize an entire neighborhood to get their input on a mural and to get everyone excited about the project? We did it through street interviews, community presentations, and an ending community celebration, and it was an incredible learning experience to see just how varied people ' s viewpoints on their community were. We got responses ranging from people who absolutely hated the crime and the drugs in the community, to people who saw opportunities for the community to grow and to brighten.
Second of all, how do you communicate with difficult people? We had everything from community elders heckling us to youth who didn ' t want to spend any time working. It ' s a difficult task, but what I ' ve found so far is that it takes a willingness to reach out again and again, through different methods. It ' s not something that can happen in an instant.
Looking even more broadly, how you communicate comes in more ways than just speaking to another person. As I worked on the handbook trying to codify everything that Art @ Work is, I struggled with the problem of communicating a vision, an ideal. How do you communicate to someone else your vision for what a program needs? How does a potential property owner or funder change the way you communicate that vision to others? Communication is incredibly difficult, and something that I ' ve learned I have to consider time and time again. This internship has been an incredibly valuable in-depth study on the process of working with people."-Jimmy
• Created a handbook of operations codifying Art @ Work ' s program operations, mission, vision, and values
• Assisted lead artist and artist intern in mural design, mural painting, and youth leadership
• Created a website for Jubilee Arts ' sister organization Strength 2 Love II
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