Arts EVOLve Community Artist Workshop

Hi all!

As you all know, I have been working with community artists to develop an arts program at LEAP 3 that uses creative methods to help students apply science, maths and LO (life skills) curriculum to community outreach projects.

After the success of the holiday program, LEAP 3 staff, students and the artist were demanding more, so we decided to continue the project on a larger scale. The artists decided that they wanted to actually create their own non-profit organisation to eventually work with many schools in multiple communities.

At first we were a bit confused on how we begin such a feat, but then Sarah D. and Lauralee from Dominican University came to Jo'burg to help us out. Last week they conducted a 2-day workshop at LEAP for the artists (myself included). At the workshop we learned the basics of forming a non-profit organisation and just learned how to better organise for the long run.

We left the workshop with new focus and a clear vision for the future (not to mention a whole lot of tasks to take us there!). The workshop was also extremely motivating for the artists and they are excited beyond belief about the prospects for the future.

Thanks so much to Sarah and Lauralee for coming out and thanks to LEAP and TWA for their support as we progress on this project.

We will keep you posted as we progress! Oh, and we chose a perliminary name for our project...Arts EVOLve.

Sara