GVCA to Receive Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Press Release can be read below:
Mount Morris —The Genesee Valley Council on the Arts (GVCA) has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support the Creative Artists Migrant Program Services (CAMPS) and GLOW Traditions, our regional traditional arts and folklife program. This project, entitled “Connecting by Design: Farmworkers & Artists Share Talents & Traditions,” will support a series of workshops, events, and an exhibit that promotes arts engagement and creation with Hispanic/Latinx communities in our region. This integrated initiative at GVCA is among 1,073 projects across America totaling nearly $25 million that were selected during this first round of fiscal year 2021 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects funding category.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support this project from GVCA,” said Arts Endowment Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. “GVCA is among the arts organizations across the country that have demonstrated creativity, excellence, and resilience during this very challenging year.”
The CAMPS program was founded in 1975 by Sylvia Kelly at the Geneseo Migrant Center, with a mission to offer free art workshops to migrant farmworkers and families in Western New York, who are currently predominantly Hispanic. The program moved to the GVCA in 2020 under Coordinator, Julia Stewart-Bittle. It continues to bring arts instruction directly to workers who live in geographic and cultural isolation on farms miles away from towns, often with no transportation nor access to arts opportunities.
GLOW Traditions has been documenting and presenting traditional arts and artists in Genesee, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming counties since 1997. Founding director, Karen Canning, coordinates this collaborative program with arts councils in our adjoining counties, and has worked with Latino/a community members to present Mexican Day of the Dead, Christmas Posada, and Puerto Rican Three Kings Day celebrations.
The “Connecting by Design” project seeks to increase and diversify its roster of artist instructors, reaching out to GVCA members, regional artists, and expanding to farmworkers themselves. As Stewart-Bittle explains, “Drawing on my 20-year teaching experience within CAMPS, I felt it was time to design a real exchange. Not only will the artists teach workshops for farmworkers, farmworkers with traditional arts skills will have the opportunity to teach GVCA instructors. We will be able to learn from each other.”
Canning adds, “All of us have traditional knowledge that we carry with us, often reflecting our cultural heritage. For example, arts like papel picado (paper cutting), embroidery, weaving, pan de muerto (decorative breads) and sand paintings are found in the DÍa de Muertos celebration, which remembers loved ones who have passed on. Like generations of immigrants before them, many of our newer residents bring beautiful artistic traditions that add value and meaning to their daily lives and have the potential to enrich us all.”
Stewart-Bittle continues, “GVCA artists and farmworkers will have the opportunity to connect on a deep, personal level that moves beyond mere social graces, into a place of real and lasting understanding.” Artwork created through the workshops will comprise an exhibit at the end of the year in the GVCA gallery on Murray Hill in Mount Morris, and potentially to 1-2 other sites, as well as online.
“We are thrilled to be selected by the NEA to continue this important and significant project,” said Deborah Bump, GVCA Executive Director. “With all of the changes 2020 brought, Julia and Karen were able to adapt the migrant art classes to an online environment, and their successful collaboration with the NYS Migrant Education Program reached farmworkers all across the state. We are so excited that they will be able to continue their work with the generous assistance from the NEA, and hope the exhibit will extend the community-building experienced by the participants to our wider Hispanic/Latinx community and the general population.”