To date, there are 126 graduates of the Community Arts Training Institute collaborating, creating and making a difference in the St. Louis area. Artists of all disciplines – poets, visual artists, performers, musicians – are bringing the arts to nontraditional audiences (read: not the crowd at Friday-night gallery walks), with the mission of creating social change.

But these artists are not working alone; they are working in partnership with social-service providers and community workers, a high percentage of whom are from health- and human-service agencies. These nontraditional audiences – homeless men in transitional housing programs, residents of juvenile detention centers, refugee youth, at-risk populations from children to seniors – are engaging with art on their own turf to bring about healing and improvement in their quality of life.

“The people who are doing these programs, working in these kinds of collaborations, [would] not be working at the level they are now without [this training],” said Roseann Weiss, director of Community Art Programs and Public Art Initiatives at the Regional Arts Commission and director of the CAT Institute. “CAT helps the artists and social-service providers to think about collaborations that make a difference, to expand beyond their own abilities as individuals. In addition to implementation, we teach them how to find funding for these new programs.”

Following a competitive nomination, application and interview process, the ninth session of the CAT Institute convenes this month, bringing together eight artists of various disciplines and eight social-service providers or community workers. The fellows are provided with more than 50 hours of training over intensive, two-day sessions 10 hours a month for five months.

They’re led by a variety of area educators, including Jane Ellen Ibur, a renowned writer and arts educator. The CAT Institute, widely considered to be a national model, has a rigorous curriculum that includes training on partnership and survival strategies, identifying funding sources, legal and liability issues, assessment techniques and advocacy. One of the more unique elements of the training is the lab project, where teams are charged with developing a potentially sustainable program.

“Of the community arts training programs across the country, the CAT Institute has a much larger emphasis on lab projects,” said Weiss. “We create these small teams of three or four to create a model for a community arts project, and some of these have spurred new programs.” The Community CollaborARTive was an extension of a CAT lab project led by artist Con Christeson. The program works with clients of Peter and Paul Community Services (a transitional-housing program) to document through art their personal journeys from homelessness to independent living.

For some, the CAT experience has led to dramatic career changes. “CAT really broadened my horizons. And to learn about the power of art not only as an artist, but how it can affect people in a community, gave me a vision about what I want to do with art,” said Byron Rogers, who graduated this past spring. “The experience really made me focus, gave me goals in life.”

The experience went beyond enhancing his current position; it led him to a new one. Rogers, now an art teacher at Cardinal Ritter College Prep High School in St. Louis, has continued to work on community arts programs. As the youth program director at Wesley House, a community-based center with an after-school program for kids, he collaborated with Logos School to produce a mural on an outside wall of Wesley House in a North Side neighborhood.

“By exposing inner-city youth to art, [we encourage them to] express emotions that they normally wouldn’t share: their fears, angers, ability to talk about pain,” said Rogers. “My goal is to get kids focused on art as their outlet so they don’t lash out on anger but lash out on paper.” Exposure to the arts for some of Rogers’ students has provided much more than an outlet. “A lot of these kids didn’t know they had talent or ability or a gift,” said Rogers. “A lot of them have developed good skills in poetry and art.”

The Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma, a community-based program that provides mental-health services to refugees in St. Louis, has implemented a number of successful community arts programs for refugee youth. Anne Farina, director of youth services who graduated from CAT this past spring, had never heard of the program and had no expectations.

“I just knew that there’s a lovely relationship between social services and art and artists,” said Farina. “As a social worker, I had some experience working with artists, but [CAT] took everything to another level.” One of these programs is Project Common Ground, a performing-arts initiative dedicated to bringing diverse teens together to explore their similarities and differences through artistic expression.

Prior to the development of Project Common Ground, Farina helped to develop arts programming for what is now called International Play Ground. One of the most poignant stories Farina recalled is about a young girl who fled Africa with her mother to escape female circumcision. “She had spent years in hiding; she was fleeing persecution and understandably had issues in school [when she got here],” she said.

“She started coming to the International Play Ground, and this creative mind just emerged,” Farina continued. “She started writing poems and sharing them. There are so many stories like this. When [these kids engage], they feel like they can do anything now; they feel amazing, and they want to do it again.”

2005/2006 Community Arts Training Institute fellows

• Brandie Adams-Piphus, a program manager for Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation and budding digital artist
• June Christian, a teacher with Urban Strategies at Adams Elementary finishing her Ph.D. in education
• Tom Dykas, a potter and arts educator
• Andra Harkins, a music educator specializing in opera
• Nanette Hegamin, a photographer, retired health administrator/educator and Peace Corps veteran
• Joel Jackson, a youth outreach specialist at Project ARK, an HIV/AIDS service organization, and Project Guardian leader
• Linda Jones, a director of the Greater East St. Louis Community Fund
• Heidi Lung, a sculptor and associate educator for community programs with the Saint Louis Art Museum
• Mark Pagano, a musician involved with such organizations as ARCHS, The South City Open Studio and Gallery for Children and Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma
• Serena Muhammad, a poet and executive director of the St. Louis branch of America SCORES, a soccer and literacy organization
• Sarah Shimchick, a social worker who is also involved with That Uppity Theatre Company
• Lezlie Silverstein, a visual artist working with Craft Alliance and COCA’s Urban Arts Programs
• Anna Sturgis, a social worker with the International Institute
• Karashia Tabbs, associate program director and case worker for emergency shelter services at Peter & Paul Community Services
• Kericee Tatum, an artist and art and technology specialist for COCA’s Urban Arts Programs
• Jelena Todic, a social worker in the Bosnian community

Then and Now
As part of the Regional Arts Commission’s 20th anniversary year, Arts à la Carte will include a glimpse of our arts community’s past and present, celebrating the milestones that continue to mark the growth and diversity of the St. Louis cultural scene.

One of the most successful programs to emerge from the Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training Institute is Jenna Bauer’s South City Open Studio and Gallery for Children, located in the historic South Gate Lodge of Tower Grove Park. The program is a quintessential CAT program, as its purpose is not only to enrich lives, but to ultimately provide a better quality of life for St. Louis families by providing a safe and educational environment for children to explore the arts.

Beyond opportunities to create in the visual arts (ceramics, charcoal, printmaking and sculpture), SCOSAG also provides the chance to delve into the performing arts, including songwriting and improvisational performance. Fees are $10 an hour, but through the support of foundations, individuals and fundraisers, there are scholarship funds available to supplement class tuition for families that require financial assistance.

Bauer, a graduate of Webster University with a degree in painting, said the idea for SCOSAG came when “I was looking [at this postcard] with kids in aprons and paint and began to think about a children’s art studio in this neighborhood,” she said. “I kept thinking about how happy I would have been to have SCOSAG in my life when I was a child.”

SCOSAG (www.scosag.org) officially opened in 2002, following the 2001/2002 term Bauer spent as a CAT fellow. The then-24-year-old Bauer found herself immersed in the intense, five-month program with the 15 other fellows, many of whom she had known and respected. “I felt like I was initiated into the cool club,” laughed Bauer. “But seriously, it was this amazing group, so diverse, and reflected how our city really is.”

Bauer was paired up with another CAT fellow to develop an arts program for the St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center. Though the program never formally took shape, the experience provided Bauer with the confidence and knowledge to make SCOSAG a reality. “It really did serve as a future model for me,” said Bauer. “Here were things I could relate to. What CAT really impressed upon me was the value of community partnerships.”

Recently, Bauer mounted an exhibition of the faculty and student artists of SCOSAG at the Third Floor Gallery on Washington Avenue. Although it closed in mid-October, Bauer was encouraged by the response and would like to have another exhibition soon. When asked about how she keeps all of this in check, with the success of SCOSAG and her bright career as an artist, she was thoughtful and modest. “I just had no idea,” she said, “all the projects that can be done. The potential to do good makes it hard to say no. You strengthen communities by saying yes.”