On last Friday’s Up-Close Show, host Gary Daigneault spoke to special guest Rhonda Coleman, Director of Groundwork Arts, a local organization whose mission is to ensure students, their families, and teachers have equitable access to the arts.
As Daigneault and Coleman discussed where she sees herself in the context of Groundworks, Coleman explained how she sees her role as a “connector” between students and artists.
“We are obviously rich with artists, performers, writers, filmmakers, photographers, dancers… so we have this incredible richness of talent, and many of these kids have never interacted with an artist or been to a gallery or a museum. So it was our idea to connect them. I feel like that’s my job: a connector. To bring the artists into the schools and introduce the kids to things they might not ordinarily come across.”
While Coleman currently brings working artists into MUSD schools, she explained how helpful this program was during COVID for family morale with their kids stuck at home: “It started as an after-school program while we tried determining where funding could bring them in… and then COVID hit. One of our artists Heather Sprague, she kind of predicted COVID a little bit. We had talked about putting our art projects online but not for a while. By March 13th, schools had shut down. But by March 20th, we had artists all from our homes, decided on a topic, recorded some videos, and had George Davies, an incredible filmmaker, pull everything together, put it online, so those kids had a different art project every week.”
Listen to the full episode here:
