Expressing Community is a relational arts project collaboration between Harwood Art Center and the College of Fine Arts’ PLACE Program. We are inviting UNM fine arts students—from all disciplines—to submit proposals for an arts project that is about community and in community. We are looking for proposals that consider the artist as the catalyst for transformative experience and the interaction between artist and community as the production of relational art. How the artistic experience is shaped and how the community relates to the orchestrated experience is open and relational.

For this proposal, we are asking for an artistic experience that is about community and in community. We are broadly defining Community as the confluence of people, cultures and places.
The PLACE Program is seeking to close the gap between university and community; between student artist and emerging professional; between artist and citizen. We believe experiential learning opportunities are essential to a student’s career development. We believe communities appreciate generous gestures of curiosity and good will. And, we also believe artists who draw upon relational thinking can transform everyday experience into a moment of meaning.

Students selected for the Expressing Community grant will be identified as Relational-Artist-In-Residence (or R.A.I.R.) because their courage and generosity to create experiences about community, in community are, indeed, rare.

RAIR students will receive project support from staff of both the PLACE Program and Harwood Art Center. The PLACE Program will provide educational and project supervision. Additionally, PLACE will promote RAIR projects with a profile on the PLACE website, project announcements and video documentation. All Expressing Community projects will also be displayed on the CABQ “Downtown Window on the Arts.” Harwood Art Center will provide RAIR students with project mentorship from an organizational perspective. Harwood will advise RAIR students on community networking strategies and facilitate making community contacts. Harwood Art Center will also profile RAIR students and their community projects in the Harwood quarterly newsletter, a circulation of 12,000.

Students interested in submitting a proposal are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the resource information on “Service Learning and Relational Art” available on the PLACE website. Students are invited to make an appointment with Ramsey Lofton, Community Education Supervisor, if they have any questions or just want to brainstorm.