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Artist
Tips
To prepare a successful
application to ArtCorps...
~Brush up your Spanish now! The interview
contains a brief Spanish portion.
~In your written application, describe your experience
vividly and tell us how you would apply it through ArtCorps.
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Events
ArtCorps will be speaking at
the following events and would love to have you stop by.
International Opportunities in the Arts presented
by TransCultural Exchange April 27-29, 2007 in
Boston
Grantmakers Without Borders' 7th Annual Conference on Social Change
Philanthropy June 7-9, 2007 in New York
United Nations Association of Greater Boston
Women's Forum Dinner on September 19, 2007 on the North Shore.
Details to come.
Guest presentation in a course on art and
peace at Berklee College of Music. Not open to the public.
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| Children Weave Four Cultures Together
"In celebration of Valentines
Day, I decided to honor the idea of love. Rather than romantic
love, our project will focus on the love of culture and unity.
Chiché primarily consists of two cultures: the Ladino culture
(the more modern Guatemalan) and the Quiché indigenous
culture. The cultures live simultaneously and apparently
harmoniously, but I'm beginning to learn that discrimination
still exists within the community. I'm so proud to be part of
a place that the community uses as a safe haven. There are
kids in the library who walk in barefoot, with dirty hands and
faces but huge smiles from ear to ear--and others with brand
new sneakers, schoolbags and gel in their hair. In the
library, they're all the same." Based at the Riecken
Foundation's library in Chiché, Guatemala, ArtCorps artist
Adriana Guzman bridges the gap between the indigenous Mayan
population and the Ladino population. By combining typical
colors and clothing from both cultures into one unified quilt,
her first project, "Our Culture United by Love," generated
pride in Guatemalan diversity and acts as a permanent reminder
that all are welcome in the library.
 Adriana proposed her idea to the library
team and set out illustrating and distributing posters
inviting the community to participate. A culturally mixed
group of 25 children ages 3 to 14 recreated typical indigenous
fabrics based upon "the cortes (skirts) the girls wore daily
to the library," then cut up pieces of American clothing to
represent the Ladino culture, and finally sewed the fabrics
together using 4 colors of twine to represent the four
Guatemalan cultures--Ladino, Xinca, Maya, Garifuna. When they
finished, they had created a patchwork quilt symbolizing the
unity of the two main cultural groups in Chiché within the
national sphere. Unveiled in conjunction with a school event attended bv
the larger community, the quilt attracted the interest of many
community members, who entered to ask questions and read
posted information. With this broad reach, Adriana's message
of social unity made all feel welcome to participate in the
upcoming year of activities at the Riecken library. She is now
organizing community forums to hear directly from the
community about its concerns.
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Returning Guatemalan Artist Tackles
Trash
 Arriving in Guatemala in January, Aneth Sibrian set
foot on Guatemalan soil for the first time since immigrating
to the United States with her family at 7 years of age. The
reunion was a mixture of joy at feeling her roots and pain at
seeing the conditions in which so many Guatemalans live. "The
trash on the streets in Cabricán really bothered me. It seemed
hard to be proud to live in a place with so much trash, and
the trash accumulations create risk of disease for the
population."
She wasn't alone. The youth at the
Riecken library in Cabricán felt passionate about the issue as
well. "We want to place trash bins so that the streets stay
clean and educate the community to throw their trash in the
proper place." Aneth helped the youth channel these sentiments
into creating "Youth to the Rescue," a group that will give
voice to their concerns and transform them into creative
action--beginning with the campaign "A Clean Community is a
Healthy Community."
Over the coming months, Youth to
the Rescue will place brightly painted trash bins throughout
the community, organize a collection system, and create
striking posters and theatrical skits to educate the public.
Eventually, organic material and recyclables will be separated
out to reduce waste, and plastics, metal and glass can be used
for art for social action projects.
Under Aneth's
guidance, Youth to the Rescue is engaging the support of
leaders, merchants and members of the community, researching
options for disposing or recycling trash to find the best
solution, and designing both trash collection and education
efforts before implementing their ideas. Past efforts to
establish a disposal system have shown that education and
engagement must be  the cornerstone of the new campaign. Educated and
inspired communities change old habits and have the motivation
and vision to create new ones.
Because of her work with
Youth to the Rescue, when Aneth returns to the US at the end
of the year, she will leave behind an engaged youth group
creating a cleaner, healthier, and more colorful Cabricán than
when she arrived.
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| NGO Focus: The Riecken Foundation
Across Guatemala and Honduras, simple but colorful one to
two-room libraries welcome whole communities to enter and
learn about themselves, their community and the world around
them. The Riecken Foundation has been building these libraries
since 2000, when it was founded as a privately-endowed
non-profit organization with the purpose of promoting
democracy and prosperity in Central American communities. It
uses its resources to build libraries, provide books and
Internet access, and promote reading, youth clubs and
community leadership activities in order to spark a spirit of
discovery and citizen participation.
At all steps,
Riecken develops its communities' civil society. It asks
communities to organize representative committees to lead the
libraries, to supply land, to provide the salary for a local
librarian, and more. Riecken also provides ongoing librarian
training and programming to develop citizen leaders. To
deliver this professional development and program support more
efficiently, Riecken has adopted a growth strategy of building
new libraries in regional clusters.
Now in our second
year partnering with the Riecken Foundation, ArtCorps has two
artists strategically situated to serve 4 different Riecken
communities. These artists' objective is to strengthen the
work of the Riecken Foundation by engaging more community
members in the civil society process and awakening a creative
spirit of discovery.
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