News
With sincere
thanks, ArtCorps welcomes ArtVentures as a new supporter of our
work.
ArtCorps received over 150 initial artist
applications for the 8-12 openings in the 2008
program.
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Events
ArtCorps will be speaking at the following events.
A
retreat for members of the freeDimensional network, linking artistic
communities to international social justice, August 6, 2007 near
Toronto, Canada.
United Nations Association of Greater Boston
Women's Forum Dinner on September 19, 2007 on Boston's North
Shore. You are invited! Details to come.
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Contact Info
ArtCorps
www.artcorp.org
+1 (978)
927-2404
artcorps@nebf.org
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July 2007
 This month we share ArtCorps' suspenseful 4-month fight
to ensure continuity in our commitment to Asocación Manglé in
El Salvador, one of our valued NGO partners.
Asociación Manglé
serves over 86 communities in the Bajo Lempa region of El
Salvador, communities like Ciudad Romero. The families of
Ciudad Romero originally lived across the nearby river but
escaped the civil war by moving to southern Panama. Upon
returning, they were resettled along political lines. To
rebuild their community and lives, they could reliably depend
only upon themselves.
Living in a zone that has a high
occurrence of floods, droughts and earthquakes, local
community members needed to organize themselves with an alert
system and to increase both their skill base and citizen
participation in community affairs in order to improve the
basic living conditions of poverty that make them more
vulnerable. Manglé was founded to address this need. It
organizes and trains Ciudad Romero and similar communities to
develop economic opportunities, foster a sustainable
relationship with the natural environment, construct durable
housing and systems for waste disposal and water purification,
and organize response to natural disasters.
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Journey to El Salvador: The Tale of a Chilean
Theater Artist and his Wine
The
bottle of red Chilean wine had traveled from Santiago, Chile
to San Salvador, El Salvador only to spend 2 nights in airport
detention and be returned to Chile. There it sat for two and a
half months, unopened. Only after the wine had returned to San
Salvador, reaching a total of 10,452 air miles, and traveled
the highway to its final destination in Ciudad Romero did
Chilean ArtCorps artist Oscar Gálvez uncork it in celebration
together with staff of both ArtCorps and local NGO partner
Asociación Manglé.
 The journey of the wine is one chapter in
a story that began in 2005, when ArtCorps first sent an artist
to Manglé, a Colombian visual artist named Juliana Baquero.
American theater artist Aryeh Shell followed in 2006, getting
youth excited about creating plays about global warming, AIDS,
immigration, and more. "After the last performance, an
audience member asked the youth to reflect on their experience
with me," writes Aryeh. "They revealed that through theater,
they have learned to value themselves and to value their
community." That year, 80 youth took to the stage to bring
social messages to approximately 8,100 audience
members.
By the end of
2006, "ArtCorps methodology transformed local youth from
passive beneficiaries to active participants-dynamic subjects
capable of initiating their own projects, developing
themselves individually, and contributing to the development
of their communities," says Estela Hernández of Manglé.
The organization subsequently wrote theater into its
strategic plan as a priority tool for engaging
youth.
To ensure sustainability, ArtCorps was committed
to sending another theater artist to build upon Aryeh's
success. Beyond demonstrating the power of theater, Aryeh had
identified a particularly committed youth named David to
mentor and train to lead theater for social action projects
after her departure. The variety and depth of skill required
to do so, however, is more than can be learned in one year.
Another ArtCorps artist was
needed in 2007 to organize continued projects and
further train David.
ArtCorps' search for a successor
extended from the usual summer recruitment period straight
through the fall of 2006. A theater artist must have excellent
command of Spanish to work well in El Salvador. There were
American artists who lacked Spanish fluency and native
Spanish-speaking artists who lacked the financial capacity to
volunteer for 1 year and pay certain personal expenses. We
currently seek funding for language training and a monthly
living stipend to eliminate these obstacles.
 Enter Oscar Galvez in early January 2007.
A promising youth Chilean theater artist, Oscar had completed
his thesis researching new genre public art-a form that "uses
both traditional and nontraditional media to communicate and
interact with a broad and diversified audience about issues
directly relevant to their lives." He also brought practical
experience applying new genre public art to environmental
issues.
Within six weeks, Oscar boarded a plane in
Santiago, Chile with bags packed and the blessings of the
Salvadoran consul in Chile. In his suitcase, he carried a
bottle of red Chilean wine. The plane landed in El Salvador.
One minute, Oscar was bursting
with enthusiasm to unite with the youth of the Bajo Lempa. The
next minute, he was in airport detention, his travel
motivations under suspicion, and a policeman attached to his
side. The airport migration officials in San Salvador
actually sent Oscar and his wine back home.
Keeping
the youth of the Bajo Lempa in the forefront of his mind,
Oscar and Manglé exercised patience through 2 months of
back-and-forth with government offices in both countries. At
one point, they were asked to obtain a signature from a
government agency that did not yet exist. Their persistence
paid off, though, and in May, Oscar finally stepped out under
the Salvadoran sun. It was truly a moment to
celebrate.
 ...but not sit back and relax. Feverish to make up
for lost time, Oscar had to recognize the Salvadoran pace of
life and the need to organize new groups as part of the raw
materials out of which to create projects. Many of the youth
who worked with Aryeh now participate in Manglé as adults or
were accepted to college, so Oscar has drawn new youth from
the communities of Ciudad Romero and Nueva Esperanza into
workshops on visual and musical expression as well as theater.
With the youth having chosen
the environment as the first issue they will explore, Oscar is
deepening and expanding their ability to express their
concerns and inspire action through art.
Click here to read about
one of Aryeh's final projects.
Click here to read Oscar's
blog (in
Spanish).
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