AICAD announces new round of Arts & Wellbeing Mini-grants

AICAD is pleased to announce a new round of Arts & Wellbeing mini-grants, in partnership with the Foundation for Art & Healing, that promote artistic and creative approaches to addressing loneliness among students and others while connecting campus communities to the broader communities in which they are situated. Funded projects include:

• NSCAD University will pursue a project that explores decolonizing creative practice through direct engagement with the Mi’kmaw community in Halifax. This initiative seeks to foster meaningful relationships between Indigenous knowledge keepers, artists, and the NSCAD community, centering Land-based creative practices as a means of cultural exchange, healing, and well-being.
• ArtCenter College of Design will partner with Design for Disaster Response LA to offer creative engagements that allow space to rebuild connections and bring humanity into the post-wildfire recovery process, aiming to restore hope, identity and a sense of belonging.
• School of Visual Arts will employ Foundation for Art & Healing tools, such as the Colors & Connection workshop and Project UnLonely Films, to foster greater connection on campus, particularly addressing challenges of being an urban campus with 50% international students.
• California College of the Arts, through its Center for Art and Public Life, will expand the Love Lives in SF series of activities, providing workshops at farmers markets and public
  squares across the city, inviting the broader community to participate in creative activities that promote wellness and connection.
• Otis College of Art & Design will hold an intergenerational arts family workshop day that fosters well-being through creative engagement and connecting Otis College with the broader Los Angeles community, highlighting how creativity can be a powerful tool for mental health and social engagement by presenting alternative methods of communication and expression and creating space and context to discuss challenging or taboo subjects.