Creating Community: A Virtual Art Gallery Exploring Reliance and Creativity during the COVID-19 Pandemic
nat rosasco • Apr 17, 2020
This virtual community art project is an opportunity for our University of Pittsburgh students, faculty, and staff to nurture a sense of community by creating, connecting, and sharing experiences navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis that is significantly affecting our lives. While the past several weeks have been incredibly challenging, through flexibility, ingenuity, and creativity we are adapting to our current situation and we want to hear how members of our Pitt community have been creatively adapting. Existing evidence on the relationship between art and public health demonstrates that arts-based interventions such as this project can be powerful approaches for reducing adverse physiological and psychological outcomes and can increase social connections and cooperation. Using the supplies you have and your imagination, we are asking you to spend some time creating projects that address this question: During the COVID-19 pandemic, how have you stayed connected and maintained community connections? Submissions may include any creative medium you can think of, such as painting, writing, drawing, poetry, music, collage, filmmaking, comics, and beyond. Your artistic works will be curated and shared in a virtual gallery to highlight your creativity, shared experiences and stimulate community discussions. Your resourcefulness and innovation will serve as models and inspiration to the Pitt community as we seek to use these uncertain times to harness creativity and dedicate efforts to ensuring strong community ties.
Art Against Racism is a virtual arts exhibition which aims to lift up the tremendous array of creative works made in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In doing so, project organizers hope that the exhibition will serve as an archive of the national artistic response to this historic moment.
La Raza Youth Leadership Institute hosted an art contest for youth ages 12-19 with the goal of motivating Latinx youth to get vaccinated. Three winners were chosen, and the first place winner's artwork was displayed on buses and in bus stop shelters near a number of schools. A phone number is included with the artwork for youth to call to receive more information about vaccines.
Saint Louis Story Stitchers Artists Collective's Perception Isn't Always Reality engages BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) teen and young adult artists to reevaluate messages they may have received about Covid-19 and vaccinations and to reevaluate the sources of the information. Through their own brand of urban storytelling that involves collaborative work in hip hop music and krump dance, spoken word, videography, photography, and podcasting, the artists will produce a challenging body of work for the public to experience on urban canvases such as the sides of city buses and on air waves.
Based in St. Louis, Missouri and incorporated in 2014, the Story Stitchers Artists Collective uses a collaborative model to create social justice art. The mission of Story Stitchers is to document St. Louis through art and word and to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships, and literacy. Story Stitchers works to promote a better educated, more peaceful, and caring region through the creation and dissemination of original art.
The product of a collaboration the Potters' Guild of Las Cruces and Mesilla artist Josh Switzer, The Healing Wings project was developed to gave people in Las Cruces who were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic a chance to honor those lost during to COVID-19. Las Cruces community members were invited to paint clay-sculpted wings to hang on a metal tree. The wings gave the community members an artistic outlet to share their griefs or honor loved ones. The project also included a sculpture comprised of metal boxes, where people could write their experiences of grief on a paper and then put it in the box. Once the boxes are full, organizers plan to burn the notes as a symbol of letting go.
The Madisonville Community Studio is an ongoing project co-created by Madisonville residents and Design Impact to explore key questions about the inclusiveness of neighborhood changes. The project is supported by the Kresge Foundation. To improve interracial relationships in Madisonville and increase Black residents’ power, influence, and representation in the neighborhood’s development decisions.
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