Pixels for Food: Artist Bill Brown Uses Design Skills as Fundraising Tool

A friend of mine named Bill Brown, who is a graduate of Wake Forest, spoke yesterday at a conference in New Orleans called Launch Fest, self-labeled a "fun conference for serious entrepreneurs." The project Bill discussed is called Pixels for Food. Bill has been working at a community center and food pantry for the last year called the Community Center of St. Bernard. Pixels for Food is an online donation site inspired by his experience there. Check out a screen shot of the site below. The site is interactive, so be sure to visit yourself.

The Enrichment Center and UNCSA Collaborate on Play as Part of Kenan Institute for the Arts' ACCORD Initiative

As part of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts’ ACCORD Initiative, The Enrichment Center and students from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), who are also part of Art Tasting, an emerging performing arts organization in Winston-Salem, are presenting an original short play by Ian Antal and Suzy McCalley. The play, entitled “The Yesman,” will be performed Thursday, April 29 at 7:00 p.m. at The Enrichment Center at 1006 S. Marshall Street in Winston-Salem.
Visit the Kenan Institute's website for more information.

Gulu Choir Sings "Home"

Although The Voice Project is by no means local organization (it's based in Uganda), it offers a truly inspiring example of social change through art. Ravaged by conflict and war, Ugandan women, victims of rape and widowhood themselves, are using songs to bring home boy soldiers who have fled to the bush in shame and fear of the violence they committed. These songs are played on the radio or sung by women's choirs in villages across Uganda.

I found out about the organization because of an international exchange in which musicians offer up their talent and music in various ways to help bring attention to the work of the Voice Project. The Gulu Women's Choir sings a song I enjoy, "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I applaud these musicians for bringing attention to the project with their voices, but the truly remarkable voices are those of the women who communicate love, acceptance, and forgiveness with their voices.

"Home" in Gulu from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting in NC!

Alternative ROOTS Annual Meeting Website: Click Above

Presenting: Public Performances by Renown Artist, Tim Miller

Groundbreaking performance artist, world renowned humorist, writer, social and political satirist, post-modern avant garde artist and gay rights activist, Tim Miller, will perform this week at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA, Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose frank and unabashed antics on stage and off have earned him the distinction of being one of the most controversial and sought after performers/artists/writers/political satirists and humorists of our day.

The San Diego Union Tribune says his latest performance piece, The Lay of the Land, "scores him points through humor, vivid personal anecdote and recurring sense of marvelously frank, poetic sensuality. It’s the kind of testimony and revelation that doesn’t deny his gay sexuality, yet its honesty and tenderness speak directly to any- and every- one."

You won’t want to miss this golden opportunity to see Tim Miller in Lay of the Land and to see the Student Project Performance that he has created at UNCSA.

Public Performances

Thursday, April 8 - 8:00 PM - Agnes deMille Theater, UNCSA

Saturday, April 10 - 7:30 PM - Patrons Theatre, Performance Place, UNCSA

Limited free tickets are available for UNCSA Faculty, Staff and Students.
Tickets for the Public, $7; Seniors and Students, $5. Available through the Stevens Center and Watson Hall Box Offices.

721-1945

**The material is of an adult nature and not recommended for children under 13 years of age.**

Catching Up with Kathy Ann

Last spring, the Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts enlisted the help of then Salem College senior, Kathy Ann Canafax, to serve as an intern, researching social media and seeking out the best tools for online communication in the Triad. Kathy Ann was an impressively thorough, driven intern, bound for an interesting future. I checked in on her last week to see what she is up to now...

I am currently in my ninth month of AmeriCorps*VISTA service with Arts In Reach
in New Hampshire. VISTAs (Volunteers In Service To America), unlike other
AmeriCorps members, work in a not-for-profit organization to build capacity and
develop resources that increase sustainability. Although my primary tasks
are fundraising/grantwriting, strategic planning, and social media, I have also
gained experience in special event planning, Board governance, media relations,
and program
evaluation.

One of my biggest accomplishments has been assisting the Executive Director in
the creation of a short-term strategic plan. By combining her inner knowledge of
the organization with my academic understanding of planning structure, we were
able to create a working document that has helped us secure almost $20,000 in
grant funds. The greatest accomplishment of the organization this fiscal year
has been our most recent special event. Despite our feature performer
cancelling within two weeks of the event, our Board and staff cultivated a
lucrative guest list, and with the help of a charismatic presenter we have over
$37,000 in received and pledged donations from the
event.

My familiarity with nonprofit use of social media, especially through the
Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts, has been particularly helpful
during my VISTA term. We have already taken a few steps toward greater
engagement of our participants through the internet, including Facebook and
YouTube, but I am hoping to create a persuasive report to be included in our
long-term strategic planning effort, which begins this month, that includes ways
to engage participants, donors, and community
members.

Ultimately, my year with Arts In Reach has been the perfect start to a career in
not-for-profit and arts management. Arts In Reach empowers teenage girls through
arts activity, and I have seen firsthand the transformation of a participant
from awkward and shy to confident and bold, through our group mentoring
activities and various means of artistic expression. Being able to
experience all aspects of a not-for-profit, from writing grants in the office to
assisting monologue practice in theatre class, is an invaluable beginning to
understanding my own strengths and interests in arts administration.

-Kathy Ann Canafax