Recap from last entry:
- While tending to business, remember the goal
- Find time to create for it’s own sake.
- Seek help to sustain your passion
I grew up in a house that my father built; it amazes me to this day. He was a foundry worker and my mother a seamstress; a major part of their necessities in life were made by hand.* As a teenage girl ready to go to a high school football game, my mother recognized I needed a coat and in a short three hours, with her own pattern, she sewed me a very stylish garment that would have won her a Project Runway challenge.From growing a garden to raising and butchering their own poultry, they sustained a lifestyle for their family before it was in vogue. Many rural families in the 50s did the same, often out of necessity.
To this day resourcefulness happens all over the world – where individuals exhibit remarkable frugality, industry and efficiency.
Reflecting on these incredible skill sets from unexpected communities is addressed most brilliantly in the autobiography of Acumen Fund CEO, Jacqueline Novogratz.
Her story, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, has helped me envision what changes might look like for my community of art students if skill sets were fully used.
Her successful career as an international banker shifted to finding new ways of addressing poverty by philanthropic endeavors that help people become more self-sufficient. A pioneer of “patient capital,” her model has examined how charity often fails where as funding and training leads to sustained economic change. The drum of “innovation” and “entrepreneurship” is occurring in our culture yet is already happening in the most unexpected places on the globe.
When I think about how these kinds of efforts have activated some of the most challenged communities, I ask myself, “what can I learn from this to tap the potential and give my art students a broader, sustainable skill set? How great would it be to have art students learn from people who have been transformed in this way? What would a travel abroad educational, “internship” program look like where individuals that have climbed out of poverty and used their ingenuity and resourcefulness to become entrepreneurs share their process with students?
The hard work is encouraging development of business acumen as well as honing skills imbedded within students’ passion. Resilient, problem-solving abilities arise when making and observing are combined with reflection and business strategizing. These are concrete skills that translate to other fields within any domain and across any borders.
Since my last entry, as mentioned before, we are working on a grant that will help transform the role of our art program, within the college and will be inclusive of the region.
We have recently been approved by the WCCC President’s Council to move forward – first hurdle jumped now to meet the August 24th deadline.
We’ve also been called on to work with Fayette County’s Intermediate Unit as they are pursuing “maker movement” activities for middle school students in a nine-week after school program.
The scaffolding is being built for collaboration and engagement with a convergence of a number of like-minded people. Stay tuned.
*About “Techne,” the root word of technology —- (from Merriam Webster’s Unabridged dictionary) art, skill; especially : the principles or methods employed in making something or attaining an objective — compare understanding.
Be sure to check out the “Brain Trust” page coming soon, where you will see a brief bio on the people helping our program.
*Thanks to Natalia Requina Gonzalez for sharing the NYTimes article.
WagingArt 