New Year, New Grants, Endless Creativity!
Happy 2024! As we ease into the new year, we’re excited to share the latest updates, stories, and upcoming events happening throughout San Diego in our community newsletter.
Grant Announcements
We are already starting the new year strong as we celebrate exciting new funding opportunities vital to advancing our mission. These grants will enable us to have an even more significant impact on our young artists.
Prebys Foundation awarded the two-year Communities of Belonging Grant for $100,000 to build capacity, greater sustainability, and impactful community partnerships. Take the feature in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
California Arts Council awarded the Impact Project Program Grant for $14,501 to support our Community Programs and the General Operating Support Grant for $30,000 to further our commitment to engaging and collaborating with youth. Take a look at the press release and the feature in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Qualcomm awarded $10,000 for General Operating Support as part of their new Qualcomm Cares Volunteer Partnership program. Qualcomm team members recently packed and donated 60 artist kits for partnering Title I schools that will receive free access to the ArtReach Learning Portal.
Langston Family Foundation awarded $6,000 to support our Mural Programs with youth at schools and community centers, dreaming up large collaborative works representing their vision.
Ramona Community Foundation awarded $5,000 to our Artist Residency Program to provide impactful visual arts workshops to 377 Ramona Elementary students and 16 teachers, fostering student and teacher skill development in Social-Emotional Learning and community building. Take a look at the feature in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Niki Charitable Art Foundation awarded $3,000 to support our Artist Residency Program. We are thrilled to continue our longtime partnership with the foundation as we honor the life and legacy of Artist Niki de Saint Phalle through our visual arts education curriculum.
Mural Artist Apprenticeship Program
Did you know that ArtReach works with and hires local transitional-aged youth to be a part of our Mural Artist Apprenticeship Program? This unique program gives youth participants a deep dive into what it takes to bring large-scale murals to life. Apprentices are involved in creating murals: site visits, mural design, setting up/taking down our workstations, assisting with student/community paint days, and, of course, tons of mural painting.
One of our favorite elements of this program is that the apprentices get to work directly alongside our team of professional mural artists, gaining real-life work experience while contributing to their community. We are thrilled to have two apprentices working with our team: Emma and Aili! Let’s hear directly from them both and keep following along through this next year to see how their artistic journeys with ArtReach continue to develop!
Emma painting an electrical box in Little Italy
Aili prepping buttons for a mural dedication at the Copley-Price Family YMCA
Emma, a senior at Mount Everest Academy, actively participates in many clubs and extracurricular activities. These include the school’s theater company, the Mount Everest Academy jam band, and leadership in a social justice club called Ally Action. Emma has a passion for painting and enjoys spending time with like-minded individuals. According to Emma, “My favorite mural I’ve worked on so far is The Little Flower [in College Area]. Not only was it the first mural where I was officially working for ArtReach, but it also felt like a really meaningful mural for the neighborhood, and I could feel the community come together as we painted it. I have a lot of happy memories painting that mural.”
Aili, the newest Mural Artist Apprentice, is a junior at the Waldorf School of San Diego. Although she has yet to work on an ArtReach mural project, Aili actively engages in the arts at her school through the art club and pursues her own artistic explorations. She has explored various artistic media, including film, music, charcoal, sculpture, and photography. In Aili’s words, “To me, the medium is an intentional platform that reflects the meaning, delivery, and voice of every work. There are many ways to show art, and muraling is one of the most direct forms. I’ve seen in ArtReach that a community is being built through this collaborative art form, and I’m excited to be a part of that. I’m also excited to paint and expand my knowledge of working on a big scale.”
Cultivating a Creative Community: Igniting Connection and Collaboration at Ramona Elementary
This January, ArtReach is continuing to cultivate our 14-year partnership with the Ramona Community Foundation to deliver an in-class visual arts program to K-6th students of Ramona Elementary. Since 2010, the Ramona Community Foundation has supported Ramona’s youth, allowing ArtReach to engage in creative experiences for students of Ramona Elementary.
In the 2023-2024 grant cycle, ArtReach has been awarded $5,000 to provide impactful visual arts workshops to 377 Ramona students and 16 teachers. The program will foster student and teacher skill development in social-emotional learning and community building through practicing and demonstrating the CASEL 5 Framework’s five competencies: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making.
Our partnership with Ramona Elementary will empower classroom teachers to build greater confidence in art-making with their students during the ArtReach workshops that foster collaboration, community building, and belonging.
ArtReach will celebrate student success with an end-of-year art exhibit where all students showcase their art to the community of Ramona, which will foster belonging, self-esteem, reflection, collaboration, community building, and teamwork. Students’ peers, guardians, families, friends, and teachers will be able to acknowledge the hard work, creativity, and expression of our student artists at Ramona Elementary’s Open House Event in the spring.
Cultivating a Creative Community: Igniting Connection and Collaboration at Ramona Elementary
Our Community Programs team has been providing workshops at the San Diego Central Library’s Creative Collective on the 1st & 3rd Tuesdays of each month. These sessions are free for all participants and aim to connect them with their artistic sides; no experience is needed. Workshops expose participants to historically underrepresented art mediums—including fiber and textile arts, sculpture, and printmaking—and encourage them to create a series of works that reflect personal narratives while creating a supportive community environment inspired by worldbuilding.
We are excited to announce that more workshops are coming soon to other libraries in San Diego County!
January 17
Sierra Aguilar will be teaching an Art Journaling 101 workshop at the Grossmont Healthcare District Health & Wellness Library.
January 29
Lulu Yueming Qu will be teaching a Chinese Brush Painting workshop at the Point Loma/Hervey Library.
Lazy Acres’ Envirotoken Program
Our partnership with Lazy Acres Mission Hills and their Envirotoken program is still going strong! This fundraising opportunity is centered around rewarding individuals who make eco-conscious choices by opting for reusable bags and reducing single-use items, thereby reducing landfill waste. Every time you visit the Lazy Acres Mission Hill location with your own grocery bags, you will receive one 10-cent envirotoken per bag. This token can then be given to your favorite nonprofit (that’s us!), and every month, Lazy Acres will tally up the tokens and convert them into monetary value. Learn more about the Envirotoken Program here >>
Your choice to support us through this program directly contributes to our mission to ignite youth creativity through visual arts expression and community connection, bringing the transformative power of art to underserved K-12 students in our area.
Ponce’s Cares Supports ArtReach in January
In 2023, Ponce’s Kensington launched a new fundraising campaign called “Ponce’s Cares.” For the last six months, a portion of sales from a monthly drink special were donated toward a local non-profit. Ponce’s donated over $5K to six different organizations!
For the entire month of January, Ponce’s Mexican Restaurant has chosen ArtReach as the first featured Ponce’s Cares nonprofit in 2024! For the month of January, they will donate a portion of sales of “La Artista” margarita to ArtReach at their Kensington location.
“La Artista” – Dulce Vida Blanco tequila, Cointreau orange liqueur and East Imperial Yuzu Lemonade with dehydrated dragon fruit (non-alcoholic version available). You can even order mason-jar margaritas to-go.
Head on over and try La Artista, and make sure to take a photo and tag @artreachsd and @poncesmxrestaurant on social media!
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