The Puffin Foundation West., Ltd. granted Lake Erie Ink $1,700 in 2022 support of Creative Communities Connect, a program built in response to the increased need for community building and creative expression during a time of social isolation. This was our third year of this project. Creative Communities Connect is a multigenerational writing project that encourages community members to respond to a common prompt through creative writing or art. At Lake Erie Ink, we believe in the transformative power of creative expression and the ability of the arts to bring people together, and this project did just that. In addition, we are still being conscientious of the covid pandemic and this project brought people together in a safe way during the pandemic – creating a community of writing and art without physically bringing people into the same space.
Through Creative Communities Connect, Lake Erie Ink promoted a “call for submissions” throughout the community, gathered the submissions, and then published the submissions in a bound anthology. To further the program’s reach, Lake Erie Ink also worked with local businesses to organize a pop-up public art display of the writing and visual art submitted as part of the project in a storefront window in the Coventry neighborhood so the community could safely engage with the project. All the storefront displays were up for several weeks to give people time to safely stop by and look at their convenience without a large group gathering.
During the grant period, Lake Erie Ink once again conducted two submission drives with different prompts. The first, which ran from November 8 – December 6 of 2021 was themed “In Between.” While the submission window was in 2021, the display and Anthology were produced in the winter and spring of 2022. The second, which ran from June 1 – July 15 asked people to reflect on the theme of “Finding your Way.” At the time of writing this report, the “Find Your Way” collection is still currently on display.
We received over 63 submissions from 47 people over the two prompts, with participants ranging in age from 10 to 80. To reach participants and encourage submissions, we continued with our previous strategies of putting up fliers, posting to our social media, emailing former participants and coordinating with our community parts to help promote. In addition, we asked our teaching artists for recommended submissions from students they were working with, tabled in the community and engaged in workshops with local libraries.
In summary, this project was once again a great success. Through Creative Communities Connect, Lake Erie Ink was able to provide a way for people to come together around a common theme and build community amongst one another while staying safe and socially distanced. This project also gave our community a platform to express themselves creatively during a prolonged time of stress and anxiety for many. Now that we have been running the program successfully for a couple of years and the community has responded in a positive manner, we are looking into new ways to expand the project and to continually give it a fresh look and feel. We feel this project is a very important contribution to the Cleveland Heights community. We look forward to seeing what other ways we can build on this project in the future, all while continuing to bring people together, while physically staying apart.
