Summer 2011 NewsAmerica: Now and Here

Chameleon has had an amazing year, and we are pleased to share with you our programming summary for 2010-2011. We are very busy this summer working with the Jackson County Family Court, KC Urban Youth Center, KCKS YWCA, and America: Now and Here. This is the time of year Adelia Ganson, Amanda Rehagen, and I work on final reports and submitting grants for programming in 2012. Chameleon has in the past received funding from many of Kansas City’s most prominent foundations, including the Muriel McBrien Kauffman, Francis Families, H&R Block, Oppenstein Brothers, R.A. Long, Bank of America, KC Art Fund, and the Missouri Arts Council. We also wish to thank our private donors who annually support Chameleon’s summer arts programming for adjudicated youth.

To learn more about Chameleon contact Hugh Merrill at hughmerr@hotmail.com or find us on Facebook.

 

Program Summary 2010-2011

Homeless Liaison KCKS

We provided five months of arts and youth development programming in conjunction with the KCKS Homeless Liaison, including in-depth programming at these locations:

Programming began on Saturdays in January and continued until May 15th reaching over 100 homeless children.

 

Tony Aguirre Community Center
A long-running partnership with the Kansas City Missouri Parks and Recreation department provided the Tony Aguirre neighborhood center with these elements:

 

Jackson County Family Court

The Jackson County Family Court was unable to provide programming in the summer of 2010 for adjudicated children and teens in Detention and the Jackson House Center due to budget cuts. Over 100 children, both male and female, ranging in age from 10 to 17 years of age, would not have had any access to positive arts programming without Chameleon Arts and Youth Development (CAYD). Most have academic, social, behavioral, and literacy problems. Many have little outside support and are victims of drug abuse, gangs, violence, and incarceration. Arts programming is effective at helping these children and teens get on the right path in life.

Chameleon provided 10 weeks of summer programming and 8 weeks of fall classes, providing these children with arts and academic skills. Extreme stress associated with this programming requires temporary breaks, so the spring of 2011 was chosen to give the artist/educators a needed respite. We have restarted this important programming in the summer of 2011 and hope to continue through out the fall of 2011. Over 200 children were reached through these efforts.

 

Holliday Elementary Montessori School KCMO School District Programming

Holliday Elementary Montessori School is 97% African American and is located in the heart of the traditional African-American Community in Kansas City, Missouri. CAYD artist/educator and Professor Asma Kazmi of the Kansas City Art Institute led a group of artists to teach science to 6th graders using artistic processes. The project worked with 90 students who used the learning opportunities to increase their knowledge of physical science. The school was elated by the success of the program and we will continue in the fall of 2011. urban1

 

KC Urban Youth Center

Weekly programming began in March 2011, partnering with the KC Urban Youth Center, located at 28th St. and Troost Ave. The mission of this Center is to offer Christian hope and wholeness to urban populations. They empower kids with resources to develop faith, character, knowledge, and skills.
CAYD began working with 30 students, providing creative arts activities that reinforce the precursors of learning, in support of academic skills. We expanded the program to reach 60 children weekly in the 8-week summer program starting in June of 2011. We will continue creative programming through the fall and hope to work with all three KC Urban Youth Center sites located in Kansas City’s urban core. This will help us to reach several hundred kids weekly, with after school programming.

 

Environmental Arts and Youth Programming

We are committed to designing and facilitating environmental arts development programming for at-risk youth through participation at local festivals. By working to expand our audience, we will increase public awareness and interaction with our artist facilitators and projects. By building an effective public persona, our organization can further our efforts in the downtown area.

 

Oceans of Desire

Guided by Chameleon, The Kansas City Art Institute’s Community Arts and Service Learning Program (CASL) built portable arts installations and actions that teach people about water pollution and related environmental problems.

Oceans of Desire is a series of eight graphic pools adhered to rubber mats, similar to what you see on the floors at big-box stores, family entertainment houses, or car dealerships. The pools have been used as games requiring environmental knowledge and are complete with prizes as incentives. These activities include:

The pools were installed as performance pieces, leading to discussion on issues expressing concern for clean water and similar subjects. These actions were conducted in partnership with StoneLion Puppet Theatre and Bridging the Gap.

The locations where these took place included:

Audience participation included 1000 individuals.

 

Earth Day, Earth Walk Animal Parade

Working with the CASL class at the Kansas City Art Institute, Chameleon created an environmental outdoor arts installation. The students cut silhouettes of sharks, porpoises, fish, whales, hippos, cows, ducks and other animals from wood. They then painted and stenciled text on the animal forms identifying and explaining the major environmental problems faced by the earth. These colorful animal signs are secured to fence posts and can be temporarily planted in the ground.

Hundreds of people were attracted to the installation and wandered in and through the signs. At the center of the installation was a table manned by students to help lead discussions on solving environmental problems. The Animal Parade was performed and installed at these events:

 

Community Arts Projects

Fundred Dollar Bill Project

Chameleon Arts Agency was invited by internationally regarded artist Mel Chin to be a major contributor to his Fundred Dollar Bill national community arts project. This acclaimed piece attempts to use the arts to leverage $300,000,000.00 (three hundred million) from the United States Congress to create gardens that will clean up unsafe levels of toxins and lead in the soil of New Orleans. This is accomplished by planting what is referred to as hyper-accumulating vegetation, which pulls toxins from the soil where they are planted. Children are the most affected by lead, so their benefit is emphasized in the work. Everyone and anyone, students, teachers, artists, parents and celebrities, are making their own Fundred Dollar Bills– which are original, hand-drawn interpretations of US $100 bills.

Perhaps most importantly, The United States Environmental Protection Agency in West Oakland CA is now applying the science initiated by Chin in their neighborhoods in an attempt to cleanse their soil.

The over-arching goal is to collect over 3 million of these individual artworks. Each participant is allowed to draw only one Fundred. The cumulative total of Three hundred million in Fundred dollars represents the equivalent cost (in U.S. Dollars) required to clean up every lead contaminated property in New Orleans, so that every child is protected.

At the end of the project, all drawings will be presented to the U.S. Congress with a request for an even exchange of the creative capital.

Fundred installations and performances were brought to the public to teach people about lead contamination in the soil at many venues:

Other organizations involved include:

We have collected over 6000 Fundreds in 10 months of community art events.

Random Acts of Kindness 2

RA2K: Random Acts of Art Kindness

Guided by Chameleon, a group of students at the Kansas City Art Institute have created RA2K: Random Acts of Art Kindness, an artists collective that brings the arts to the streets of Kansas City to foster tolerance, joy, and beauty.

The initiative provides acts of arts kindness to people waiting for buses, living, working, and shopping along 31st St. and Troost Ave. RA2K artists have set up weekly street photography studio to take portraits of commuters while providing them with various items of enjoyment, such as apples, bottled water, coffee, toys, and bags of art.

On April 7th, RA2K opened the 31st and Troost Street Gallery by installing large-scale digital posters based on portraits taken of the local community. These pieces are in the windows of Best Deal Office and Appliance Store on the east side of Troost Ave. The goal is to fill all the windows of empty stores with art, creating an ongoing street gallery. The next round of installed works will be in conjunction with the Pow Wow celebration in the fall of 2011. This gallery was a part of the 2011 Troost Festival and will continue indefinitely. The work is seen by hundreds of folks daily.

America: Now and Here

America: Now and Here (ANH)

Chameleon was invited to brainstorm with and provide community arts programming for America: Now and Here, a national dialogue on the arts and society initiated by high-profile artist Eric Fischl and arts administrator Dorothy Dunn, Director of Education at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Now and Here asks what can art do to help us create a better vision of our society and provide a new process for critical dialogue by passing the extremes of political discussion. Fischl is joined by internationally acclaimed artists Chuck Close, Susan Rothenberg, Ed Rushka, Alex Katz, as well as playwrights, poets and musicians in producing an exhibition using the subject of America as a starting point. The visual art exhibition at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center also included many talented artists from the Kansas City region.

ANH is continuing to work with Chameleon Arts to produce programming for other venues across the country over the next several years, beginning in July of 2011 in Detroit, Michigan. Chameleon has produced the My America Zine and Liberty Portraits for upcoming venues.

 

Professional Development

Chameleon provides professional workshops on community arts and youth development to national conferences, universities, national media outlets and social service agencies. In 2010 we facilitated the following professional events:

Disney Radio
Hugh Merrill, executive director, was interviewed in January 2011 on Disney Radio. Chameleon’s history, recent programming, and the Fundred Dollar Bill project were all discussed.

KC’s Radio Show for the Fearless Christian Woman
Featuring host Dacia Moore on KPRT AM 1590, interviewed director Hugh Merrill, focusing on the importance of arts programming in public schools and the role of the arts in helping students achieve higher test scores and academic abilities. Many folks called in and joined in this lively discussion.

McKinney-Vento Summit
Chameleon provided the keynote presentation for the McKinney–Vento Summit a conference for Kansas City homeless youth providers on January 19th at Kansas City Kansas Community College. The summit brought over 50 professionals together to discuss how to better serve homeless children in the metro area. Chameleon provided an outline of how the arts can positively help homeless children and build youth communities.

One Homeless Night Out
For the second year in a row, Chameleon facilitated a creativity workshop for Synergy and One Homeless Night Out. Large groups of children are provided with relevant creative exercises as they spend the night outdoors to better understand the plight of homelessness.

Missouri Bank Cross Roads Exhibition
Two exhibitions of the art of children in CAYD programs were installed and shown in the lobby of the Missouri Bank in the Crossroads Arts District in 2010. Intern Emmett Merrill’s exhibition of photos of homeless men and children was seen by an enthusiastic and art-friendly audience.

Phoenix Families Housing
On April 21, 2011, Phoenix Families Housing hosted their 8th annual donor event, the Masquer8, which was successful in raising over $100,000 for underserved populations. PFH provides services in 32 low-income housing communities, helping more than 5,600 residents in 13 cities in Missouri and Kansas. Artist-facilitators from the organization and students from KCAI made masks for the event.

New Book Featuring Chameleon & Hugh Merrill’s Community Art
Chameleon is proud to announce the release of Divergent Consistencies, a book charting the studio and community art or director Hugh Merrill from 1968-2011 (edited by Adelia Ganson, designed by Amanda Rehagen). Merrill’s 40-year career of art-making was formed by a range of experiences, from his early years as a printmaker through his recent community work with disadvantaged children in Kansas City. Half of the book deals specifically with community art and includes a number of projects related to CAYD over the course of more than ten years.

Through these programs, Chameleon has reached about 16,500 audience members and participants. Through ongoing efforts, we are able to successfully collaborate with local and national organizations to serve as many people as possible.

 

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