| Project Title |
People of Chelsea contribution to the 400th anniversary
|
| Project Date |
2024-06-08
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| Amount Requested Minimum |
$11,000.00
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| Amount Requested Maximum |
$11,760.00
|
| Location of Project |
Chelsea, MA. The exhibit will be at Spencer Lofts Gallery during the month of June. The banners will be carried in 400th parade in September, temporarily installed at Mary O'Malley park during presentations after parade, and put up around the city after that.
|
| Time of Project |
The month of June 2024 and the 400th parade in September 2024
|
| Is this a recurring project? |
Yes
|
| If yes, what is the time period? |
The exhibit will be up for the month of June. The parade is one day. The banners will be displayed for an as of yet undetermined amount of time after the parade.
|
| Expected number of attendees |
200
|
| If a recurring project, number of attendees in prior years |
100
|
| Will your project utilize volunteers? |
Yes
|
| If yes, please estimate the total number of volunteers and the number of hours donated |
10
|
| Briefly describe your audience(s) and mission as an artist or organization. |
For Chelsea's 400th anniversary, we are delighted to continue and share our ongoing People of Chelsea (PoC) project with the community of Chelsea and beyond, bringing our neighbors together through storytelling and portraits. We are planning two events: an interactive exhibit in the Gallery@Spencer Lofts during June and a lively contribution to the 400th parade on September 21st. The new portraits and interviews made during this phase of the project will be added to the digital archive at the Chelsea Public Library.
|
| Briefly describe the project that will take place. |
1) The kickoff exhibit at the reopening of the Gallery will feature the work of the PoC project, with new work focusing on stories from CBC (Chelsea Black Community) and how they were affected by the fire of ’73. In addition to PoC portraits and interviews, we are excited to add projections of personal photos from before, during, and after the fire that we will gather from the CBC community. An additional projection onto large white paper will encourage viewers to draw the projected image, which can then be taken home, given away, sold, donated to a cause, or saved for the 400th parade!
2) Portraits from PoC project will be contributed to the parade in September. Ten 30” x 30” banners, each on a pole, will be carried by volunteers. At the parade’s end at the park, the banners will form a semicircle to define a performance stage for presenters. Later, the banners will be placed around the city to continue celebrating the people of our city.
|
| Outline how you plan to market your project and the timeline you intend to follow. In addition, outline the audiences you intend to reach (be specific). You may attach an additional document if necessary. |
We will begin promoting the kickoff exhibit about a month before it opens via Social Media (Facebook, Instagram) and through notices sent to local arts organizations, art publications, museums, and schools. We will feature it in our ongoing monthly column in the Chelsea Record. We will reach out to art reviewers at the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, public radio stations WGBH and WBUR, local TV stations, student radio stations like WERS, and Chelsea Community TV. We will leave pamphlets in local stores.
We will do the same for our participation with the banners in the September parade, as well as piggy-backing on any efforts the 400th committee makes. We will happily provide them with visuals.
Our audience is obviously the people of Chelsea, young and old, long-time residents and newer arrivals, but we also feel this project will resonate far beyond our fair city, which is why we will reach out to mainstream media and arts organizations. The PoC project is also slated to be on exhibit at Mass General Hospital in Boston, which is a wonderful opportunity for outreach to a wider community.
We would like to point out that we hope that an intern will be of primary help to us in this effort. It is a wonderful opportunity for a young person to become immersed in the project and our city and to gain marketing skills.
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| What benefit(s) will this project bring to Chelsea and its residents? How do you expect to engage the community? |
The work of the PoC project has been well-received by the residents of Chelsea thus far, who have welcomed the voice and acknowledgment the project has given them. The civic pride that comes with feeling seen and heard is priceless and essential to the growing strength of our community. As Chelsea is being celebrated in its 400th year, we are excited to bring some of this work to the celebration. We will continue to share photographs and stories from our residents with the re-opening exhibit at the Gallery at Spencer Lofts. We are very excited to be adding to our body of work for this exhibit by collaborating with the CBC (Chelsea Black Community), a community that has a long and historic presence in our city and one that was particularly affected by the 1973 fire. We will be gathering their stories, photographing the storytellers, and sharing, through projections, their personal photographs, both old and new. The Gallery exhibit is open to everyone and gives an opportunity for the community to share stories, past and present. All these stories will be added to the Chelsea Library digital archives for historical purposes and access to all.
Having the portraits “march” in the parade via banners carried by volunteers will be a fun, engaging, and mobile public celebration of our fellow citizens and storytellers and will be a visual acknowledgment of their contributions.
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| Are you partnering and/or collaborating with other organizations? If so, name the organization(s) and their role(s) in the project. |
We will be collaborating with the Chelsea Black Community (CBC), who will help us identify those members of their community whose families have lived in Chelsea for generations, and who were most affected by the 1973 fire, and who we will photograph and interview for the PoC project. These portraits and stories will be included in the exhibit at the Gallery, and featured through projected personal images of that time period that we will gather with the help of the CBC. We envisage the projections as an interactive process that can engage the participation of gallery attendees, who will be able to draw on paper on the wall of the Gallery that the images will be projected on.
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| Acknowledgement of the Chelsea Heritage Celebrations Grant by the CCC is mandatory on all advertisement and promotions. How do you plan to accomplish this? Be specific. |
The People of Chelsea project has always made a point to acknowledge its funders and supporters. The Heritage Grant logo will appear on all parts of this project that appear online and in print, on the wall of the Gallery and on the banners. We will notify any press we might get of the roll this grant played in making our work possible.
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| How will you measure the success/impact of this project? |
By the number of attendees of the gallery exhibition, by the number of likes on Social Media posts, by the press coverage we are able to generate, and by word-of-mouth feedback.
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| How will the project be modified if the entire amount is not awarded? Be specific. |
We will have to scale back, which would be a pity because our project is all about visibility. Less is less, in this case. We would have to cut back on the interns, which would mean cutting back on promotion and outreach. We could cut back the number of banners in the parade, which would minimize the power of representation. We would not cut back in our collaboration with the CBC because we feel it is essential to bring their voices into the PoC project, but we might have to reconsider the projections part of the exhibit, which would be unfortunate since that is the most interactive part of the show.
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, 
, 2024 Heritage Grant BUDGET.FINALDD+.pdf
