The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a Challenge America Grant to Adams State University Department of Art and Theatre. This funding will support a Social Practice Arts Residency in the San Luis Valley over the next two years.
A Social Practice Arts Residency program supports artists who create projects that involve a specific community. Selected artists will live for an extended time in the San Luis Valley and invite locals to take part in creating projects specific to our regional community. The goal of the program is to support the creativity of our diverse population and provide a new platform for citizens to make connections with one another and address the complex social issues of our region.
Three artists have been selected to participate, representing different arts disciplines. In the fall of 2019, Shelby Head, visual artist, will focus on collecting stories from beneficiaries of the 1844 land grant from Mexico and Spain. She plans to record their personal stories involving the 50-year range war with the landowners of the Taylor/Cielo Vista Ranch. These stories will be shared in an exhibition at the Cloyde Snook Gallery where she also plans to design and construct a shrine with the Costilla County land grant heirs. The shrine will be dedicated to the spirit of mountain range and to the generations of families who have used the mountain range for grazing, logging, wood, hunting and fishing.
Cory Hills, multi-percussionist musician and composer, will arrive in the spring of 2020. His project will engage the elementary and middle school aged children throughout the valley in a Percussive Storytelling program. This program brings classical music and storytelling to children in fun and accessible ways. Hills has presented more than 520 programs to over 135,000 children in nine different countries, released two international award-winning children’s albums and two children’s books. One common thread his stories share is nature; specifically, how indigenous peoples relate to the natural environment around them.
In the fall of 2020, Mike Durkin, ethnographic performance artist, will create a performance working with residents and students as creators and performers, 
through interviews, oral histories, performance making workshops, and rehearsals to uncover stories from the San Luis Valley. He will create opportunities for community members to come together, hear different perspectives, find common ground, and collaboratively create performance. Performances may take the form of story sharing circles, meals, parades, or walking tours that he hopes will reveal new/revive old histories of the San Luis Valley, provide visions of the future, and engage in day-to-day valley life.
These artists join an exciting line up of residents invited as part of the traditional ASU residency program, Rare A.I.R. All events will be free and participation from the community is highly encouraged. Upcoming events will be posted on the University’s event calendar.
For more information regarding the Social Practice Arts Residency or the traditional residency program, please visit Artist in Residence Program or contact Program Director and Assistant Art Professor Leslie Macklin.
