VSA Texas: Listen, Look, and Learn from Our Youth

We recently finished our Giving Voice program, a partnership with AIGA Austin, which consisted of pairing 8 young adults with disabilities with 8 professional graphic designers. Each pair met for 3 hour-long sessions. The mentors listened to their students to find out what topics were important to them and to understand their take on the world. Together, the teams worked on how they could turn these discussions into visual representations of the topics. Using their professional skills as graphic designers, the mentors were able to help their students turn ideas into images, resulting in 8 posters, with each relating to a social cause.

This past Saturday a team of us hung these posters along with supporting materials at the Laura Bush Community Library. As is typical of physical labor work events that happen on Saturdays, spouses and significant others were dragged along to help! Thanks to Jen Bigheart, PR Supervisor of Westbank Community Libraries, and her wife Betsy, and Kim Hopson of AIGA and her boyfriend Robin, we hung the show in just under 2 hours.

The Opening Reception will be this Saturday, October 1st from 1:00-3:00 PM at the Laura Bush Community Library, 9411 Bee Caves Road, Austin, TX 78733. The event will include a silent auction of the original signed posters. The auction will close at 2:00 PM, and winners will be announced at that time. You will also get a chance to meet the young artists and their mentors. Don’t miss this unique event! But if you do, don't worry – it will be on display through January 6th, 2017, and smaller poster prints will be available for sale online.

The final posters have not been revealed to the public yet! So those of you reading this blog are getting a sneak peek. We look forward to seeing you at the event this weekend! Invite your friends to attend through our Giving Voice Opening Reception Facebook event page here.