Craft Services
A mobile arts and crafting unit that visits targeted community sites around LA County providing the opportunity to create hands on art projects and community dance classes ultimately combining the two to produce urban situated community based performance works that are created by the people and for the people. Participlay is passionately committed to building vibrant, connected and creative communities through the combination of our art + play initiatives. We know art has the power to elevate, enlighten, transform, and celebrate. We know our particular brand of interactive, experiential arts programming is transformative. With the assistance of the MyLA2050 grant we will expand our base of skilled facilitators with a campaign to take a mobile crafting unit and “caravan” to neighborhoods across LA County, providing the opportunity for adults, children and families to create works of art that are made from their own life stories for their communities. Through this art+play initiative Participlay’s Craft Services will enhance social connectedness by increasing participants own creative thinking, confidence, personal awareness, individual leadership, personal and professional satisfaction, and above all provides a norm for a kinder and gentler people which is at the core of our commitment to creating unconditionally loving communities that enhance each individuals and each groups sense of interconnectedness and belonging.
What are some of your organization’s most important achievements to date?
-TEDxUSC at The Stevens School of Innovation, University of Southern California
-Department of World Arts and Culture, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
-The Murphy Sculpture Garden, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
-Beyond the BA, Department of Art History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
-The Art+Play Neighborhood Project, Venice, California
-The Representational Art Conference, California Lutheran College, Ventura, CA
-Play Space, Bleicher/Golightly Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
-Art+Play with Cristobal Valecillos, LA Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
Please identify any partners or collaborators who will work with you on this project.
LA's Best After School Enrichment, Mario Davila
Westminster Avenue Elementary School, Karen Brown
The Art of Aware Parenting, Julie Dubow
United States Veterans Artist's Alliance, Keith Jeffreys
3Deee, Franklin Londin
Joyful Activist, Francis DellaVecchia
City of Santa Monica, Commissioner, John Petz
reDiscover Center, Mary Beth Trautwein
City of Los Angeles, Deputy of Arts and Culture, Isaac Burks
Photographer, Michele Mattei
Former Educator, J. Paul Getty Museum, Zhenya Gershman
Please explain how you will evaluate your project. How will you measure success?
We will evaluate our initiative and measure the outcomes in a variety of ways, such as by asking teachers and parents what changes they perceive in their students and children before and after participating in Participlay's program.
We will also delve more deeply into how students, teachers, and parents see the effects by conducting in-depth interviews with them using the following questions. It is very rewarding to know, through this empirical evidence, what we already knew in our hearts: that Participlay programs do, indeed, work and make an important difference in the lives of people and their communities.
How will your project benefit Los Angeles?
The fact is that the arts foster creativity, innovation, good health and happiness.
National studies show that early and successful gateway arts experiences create life-long participation in and enthusiasm for the arts. Yet the people of our communities, schools and after-school programs are struggling with ever-increasing funding challenges.
Studies also show that individuals and families that play together create stronger positive bonds and a deeper experience of connectedness.
With the support of this LA2050 grant, Participlay can expand the reach of our art+play initiatives into the LA communities, bringing the opportunity to create individual and group artworks that are largely made of re-purposed materials.
Many of the neighborhoods we hope to serve, have ethnic and native language diversity and kids on the school lunch program. Others have rigorous academic programs, but limited opportunities for arts and creative expression.
This art+play initiative will:
Build Arts Audiences/Make the Arts Accessible
Engage Young People in Active, Hands-on Experiences
Train new Leaders & Mentoring Youth
Prepare Innovators for Tomorrow
What would success look like in the year 2050 regarding your indicator?
Success would look like that schools, families, individuals and children taking the time to make things, objects, crafts, and artworks with their own hands from the materials that they had around them--re-purposing everything into art. Art+play initiatives would become an active part of everyday life. That groups within neighborhoods would come together to share of their experiences, regarding the works that they produced and create scheduled appointed times to dovetail this activity into the life of their community. That in the future individuals live and art+play life and that as a neighborhood take into their own hands the artistic development of their community.