Nov.-Dec. 2011 - Maryland Institute College of Art

08 COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
MICA Heroes in Service
Members of the MICA Community Perform Tremendous Feats of Community Engagement
tyPiCally, a hero is someone who is willing to be of service to others and looks for ways to improve the world around them.
No shortage of heroes exist in the MICA community, where artists and designers use their talents for the betterment of their
communities and the world. The following pages honor some of the heroes who have been nominated by a MICA member.
Sarah Tooley (Photo by Bruce Weller)
One of the activities Kayleigh Porter worked on while teaching ceramics
at Good Shepherd Center with nonprofit ceramic art center Baltimore
Clayworks (Photo courtesy Baltimore Clayworks).
Natural Connection
For some, community engagement is a natural outlet for art. Cait Byrnes, a general fine arts
major who graduated in 2010, fulfilled her desire to help others through MICA’s Community Art
Partnership (CAP), a MICA program that links artists, communities, and organizations. “I did
some work teaching art at a senior housing apartment, and I started an event sophomore year
called CAPfest, which is a celebration of all things related to community arts,” she said.
Byrnes’ work with CAP led her to the Community Art Collaborative (CAC), an AmeriCorps
program that connects artists, communities, and educational institutions. Through CAC, Byrnes
was placed as a program coordinator at 901 Arts, an organization founded upon a successful
partnership between MICA and Baltimore community leaders that provides free after-school programs
in art and music to children of the Better Waverly neighborhood. “The process of making
art connects everybody,” Byrnes said. “The process of working on art together is enough to open a
conversation and create a relationship,” she added.
Joining Byrnes at 901 Arts is fellow MICA alumna Sarah Tooley, who serves as director
of the organization. “I believe 901 Arts is one of MICA’s greatest success stories in connecting
with community,” said Tooley, who received an MA in Community Arts in 2010. Among the projects
901 Arts has completed with community youth is the Sea Creature Storm Drain project,
an effort in which young people painted sidewalk murals of sea life around the neighborhood’s
storm drains. The designs brought attention to what happens to underwater life when street
trash and litter are dumped illegally in storm drains or streets since that trash eventually drains
into the Inner Harbor.
A recipient of a $49,000 Open Society Institute Baltimore Community Fellowship, Tooley
will use the money to further her work at 901 Arts. “The point of my fellowship is to create a
more sustainable infrastructure for the program,” Tooley said. Among the changes Tooley has
managed to implement: “We created a summer employment program to hire high school teens
from the neighborhood.”
Breaking Barriers, Changing Lives
When Whitney Frazier ’07 arrived in Baltimore from her hometown of Plano, Texas, “I was in
shock about what poverty meant and how it was affecting people,” she said. She thought art could
be used as a means for young people in the city to communicate about what they were going
through. “I knew art could break down barriers and change lives,” she said.
While working on her MA in Community Arts, Frazier completed her residency at Child First
Authority, Inc., an organization that partners with 17 Baltimore City Public Schools to create
after-school and daytime mentoring programs. Afterwards, Frazier was hired full time as the
community arts coordinator, where she created arts and youth leadership programs, including Art
Core, a program in which local artists teach art classes in the schools.
The change in the students who discovered an appreciation for art showed Frazier that her
instincts about art’s potential impact were correct. “Child First took it to the next level for me,”
she said, “showing that art can make tangible change for people.”