ART FROM THE STREETS – A Blueprint

How to Build One in Your Own Community and Keep It Going Year After Year

 

WHAT IT IS – A volunteer-driven arts program working with homeless individuals. AFTS is mid-way through its fifteenth year as a community-based, volunteer-driven arts program that gives homeless individuals the opportunity to explore their painting and drawing skills in free, weekly art classes, and to earn money through sales of the resulting work at an annual show. The weekly classes have attracted more than 800 homeless men and women as participants, and fourteen annual shows have produced more than $500,000 in art sales, over 90% of which has gone directly to the artists.

 

STRUCTURE – On-going classes and an Annual Show – A no-lose proposition. At the very least, people get the chance to sit someplace and interact in a non-competitive, supportive way with other people, and possibly also the chance to create something that pleases them. At first, you just make art together. Then, after awhile, maybe as much as a year, you think about having a show of the work that’s been produced. The public is invited. They come. The homeless people who’ve been coming to class become artists for the day. They stand beside work they created. People like it. Maybe they buy some. The money goes to the artists.

 

CLASSES FIRST – this is the key to success. How you set this up influences everything that follows. What we did was never a “class.” And we never emphasized the “art” part, either. We created a sort of endangered species sanctuary where the endangered species were feeling connected to other people, a sense of safety and security, encouragement, play, and maybe, finally, artistic expression. The important thing produced in the classes was relationships, not art. It was a friendly, respectful, relatively quiet place to sit for awhile, away from the usual activity of the shelter, away from the daily grind and boredom that being homeless entails.