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| UC | Planning
creative experiences for young people at the City Art Education Center
are program director and UC alumna Roz Manifold (right) and staff
members Tim Robinson and Kristina Teague. photo/Lisa Ventre |
Have
a vision.
I had always wanted to teach art in the inner city. My thesis was the
very germ of the City Art Education Center. I envisioned a studio space
with storefront windows so that people walking by could watch at the sidewalk
level. And that's exactly what we found. The space had been boarded up
since 1978, when it was the Big Six Pool Hall. It took us about 10 months
to renovate. We have two floors. It's small, but it's nice.
Learn to
write grants. I had never written a grant in my life, so at
first I wrote a lot of grants that got rejected. Our first funder was
the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which granted us $15,000 in two parts.
The first was to get us going, and the second was a matching grant so
we could challenge other foundations to help generate more funding.
Be a good
neighbor. It has to be a give-and-take relationship when you
try to implement something new in a neighborhood that is kind of set in
its ways. At the very beginning, we used to prop the front door open and
anybody could come in and see what we were doing. A lot of neighbors were
relieved because we weren't another deli or pool hall. And we have a sliding
scale for kids from the neighborhood; a lot of them take classes for free.
Teach the
basics. We offer a discipline-based arts education: visual
art classes and professional art experiences such as exhibits and opening
receptions. Each month tends to be a unit where the kids explore a new
medium. It may have painting, sculpture, and printmaking in it, but drawing
is pretty much the foundation of everything. So they draw every day, at
least for a little bit.
Stay committed. With any nonprofit
arts organization, funding is a challenge. Still, we're not going anywhere.
We're coming up with new marketing plans. But the greatest reward is working
with the kids. If it weren't for that part I wouldn't have anything to
do with it. It's incredible the amount of talent and energy in this area.
Manifold received a BFA in painting and sculpture
from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She is director of the City Art Education
Center, which she founded in downtown Cincinnati in 1996. The nonprofit
has survived dwindling funding, riots and urban flight, while providing
access to art for anyone regardless of income. The center also displays
regional artists, and a percentage of its income is based on commissions
from sales.
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