Support Giving Voice – Buy a Poster!

We are excited to have just wrapped up our second year of Giving Voice, a great new program partnering with AIGA Austin. As I’ve mentioned before in blogging about this program, it’s like VSA Texas and AIGA Austin were made for each other. AIGA is a community of design advocates bringing together practitioners, enthusiasts, and patrons to amplify the voice of design and create the vision for a collective future. And who better to amplify their voice and create a collective vision than young adults with disabilities! We matched up 11 youth with 11 professional graphic designers in Fall 2017 and these creative duos each made a poster about a social cause.

Marielle and Denise’s poster about voting

How did we match up these pairs? We gave them each a survey to fill out and then put them together based on personality and interests. It wasn't easy, but we seemed to get it right and had some great matches.

Alex and Clarissa became great friends during their short time together.

Next, our design teams met only 4 times for an hour and a half each meeting. That’s not a lot of time together! But the results were amazing.

Edith and Quinn working together on their poster

Cade and Evan working on their poster

With help from our partners at AIGA we were able to secure some donations to make this program a big success. First, One Touch Point donated the poster printing. Next, Big Medium awarded us a scholarship to be an official participant in the East Austin Studio Tour when we exhibited the posters at the Terrazas Branch Library. And finally, Trader Joe’s and AIGA chipped in for food and drinks at the reception.

Rey and Juan Carlos in front of their poster at the exhibition

Kim and Kamand at the reception

Our posters are still on view at the library and will be through the end of December. We hosted an online silent auction and some of the posters sold. But not all of them! So if you are interested in a poster, you can donate $20 or more to the program and pick up one of the available works of art. Contact me at april@vsatx.org for more details. You can see the posters here.

Giving Voice Austin

Have you heard about our Giving Voice Austin program? It's pretty new. We launched the program in 2016, and this fall will be our second time around. We learned a lot from the first program and are excited to bring it back.

Do you ever wonder, “How does VSA Texas come up with these great ideas?” Well, we do have a brilliant staff over here, but this time we borrowed from the brilliance of VSA Colorado. They hosted Giving Voice for 10 years, and when they decided to retire it, we thought it was too good to see it go. Plus, Amber Atkins, one of the masterminds behind the program moved to Austin, and she wanted to start it here. Lucky us!

So what is Giving Voice, you ask? It is a partnership between AIGA and VSA Texas. We are perfect partners because we both have mysterious acronyms for names, provide professional development opportunities for artists, and want to create a vibrant, creative, and inclusive community. Learn more about AIGA on their website.

In this partnership, AIGA recruits professional designers who want to be mentors, and we recruit youth with disabilities who want to give voice to a social cause. We then bring them together as one-on-one pairs to each create a poster with a message.

Bruce and Braelon planning their poster design

Final poster design of “You Are Not Alone” by Braelon & Bruce, Giving Voice Austin 2016

Kim Hopson, curator of our 2016 program, says:

“The mentorship program and poster exhibition show so many themes. It reflects community arts education, design for good, and social justice. Most of all it's an enriching experience; for both the mentor and the mentee.

“Giving Voice is a platform for young people with disabilities. It lets them use art to explore issues that are important to them. Their design mentor collaborates with them and facilitates their work.

“It was a great honor to curate Giving Voice 2016! I can't wait to see what this year's mentors and mentees create!”

Max getting input from Hailey, another student’s mentor

Final poster design of “These Little Guys” by Max & David, Giving Voice Austin 2016

So if you are a young adult with a disability age 16-22, or know one, we want you to get involved in this program! We already have 12 mentors ready to go, a print shop that wants to print the posters, and a venue to show the posters during the East Austin Studio Tour in November. All we need are youths interested in voicing a message through art!

The time commitment is four Saturday meetings September 16-October 7 from 12:00-1:30 pm with lunch provided. Mentors and mentees will meet at the VSA Texas classroom in central Austin. Contact April at 512-454-9912 or april@vsatx.org to get an application today! Hurry, the deadline is August 28th, and you don’t want to miss this great opportunity!

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.

Jen directs Robin on the ladder as Kim waits nearby with tape
ready to secure the wires behind the poster designed by Colton.

Robin and Kim secure wires behind the poster designed by Danielle.

Betsy gives a thumbs up from the ladder in front of posters by Madison, Pearl, and Max.