Stories

Repeat after me: local nonprofits are not in competition, they are in collaboration.

When Dr. Sharon Jones, founder of Dottie Rose Foundation, met Angie Chandler,  Senior Manager of Educational Initiatives + Public Program for the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture last #GivingTuesdayCLT, a collaboration that would strengthen the ties between art and technology for young minds was born.

Dr. Sharon recalls, “We met at the #GivingTuesdayCLT World Headquarters event at the Wells Fargo Atrium back in November where The Gantt Center was the slot before us for the event’s activities. We immediately started bonding, and as we were chatting, we discussed how we see the connections between art and tech. The process of creating a piece of artwork is the same as writing an application.”

Dr. Sharon explained that the core of both is computational thinking: Decompose, Patterns, Abstraction, Algorithms. She shared with me that as you create a new piece of art, you decompose your ideas, find patterns, abstract out what you do not want, then create your piece- just as you would when you are writing an application.

Angie remembers the conversation leading to a natural connection and shared with me that “Within a few minutes of chatting about the Gantt’s programming goals, and our Initiative for Equity and Innovation we realized there was a big connection to the mission of the Dottie Rose Foundation. We immediately began to brainstorm ways our two organizations could work together.”

Angie went on to explain that The Gantt is exploring the role of photography as a storytelling medium in connection to their Welcome to Brookhill exhibition. She said “We’ve also increased our  arts + technology programs as a part of our equity and innovation initiative. One of the goals of our initiative is to increase access for communities of color as it relates to the role of technology in the arts. We are so excited to launch this partnership with our Arts & Technology One Day camp and our Digital Lens of Photography Two Day camp. We are hoping to offer young people the skills to nurture their creativity and tell their stories.”

Finding the common ground between what both of their incredible organizations were doing, they realized that they could come together to expand their reach and abilities.

Fast forward to today, they are just a couple weeks away from their first collaborative summer workshops, Arts + Technology on June 15th with a two day workshop The Digital Lens of Photography coming up next July 12th and 13th.

The GOOD news? You can still sign up for both! 

The Arts + Technology Arts + Technology workshop will introduce and encourage students to cultivate creative strategies, technical competencies and critical thinking skills while exploring and developing new applications of technology and media within contemporary art practice. Students will create art via LED lights and code.

In The Digital Lens of Photography workshop, students will learn the art of a great photographic shot and how to enhance their image with Adobe Photoshop. Participants will even apply these techniques to cultivate their very own digital art show!