The STORY PROJECT 2021-2022

funded by the Sheila Fortune Foundation

The RITE (Read, Illustrate, Teach and Experience) Program that was funded by the Sheila Fortune Foundation this past year 2021-2022 was focused on fictional-themed literacy/storytelling, to promote creative thinking, writing, listening and the importance of sharing one’s art.

Pandemic Years 2020-2022

In December 2019, W21 moved out of this facility as the City decided it needed to sell it due to being a city asset. Also, due to a higher increase of teens on the Southside, it was a mutual agreement that a focus would be to support that side of Santa Fe due to a new teen center in the making.

The former W21 Executive Director, Ana G y Reinhardt who stepped down in October 2017 following 21 years of service, was asked to assist with the move-out transition in 2019 with 58 volunteers. She is currently a W21 Program Advisor working with a variety of alum artists and instructors carrying on new and innovative programs during the pandemic.

In January 2020, W21 moved to VITAL SPACES on Otero St downtown that houses a variety of community artists. W21 relocated its Recording Studio there. In 2020-2021 to date, before and during the pandemic, a total of 112 youth were safely involved in person and in on-line programs in recording, media art, poetry, stories on the pandemic, story books, hip hop, music and breakdancing. The organization also collaborated with Vital Spaces in the ‘Intersections’ Project, local and ABQ Schools and NM Hip-Hop University.

In November 2021, all occupants of the Otero Vital Spaces building were notified to move out due to new building plans for the building. The Recording Sold was sold at a discount to Earthcare NM.

In December 2021, W21 celebrated its 25th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition at the SW Annex Located in the Midtown Campus.

Currently in December 2021, W21 has no facility but will visit organizations and schools by providing both in-house and online programs.

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2020+ Programs During COVID -19 Shelter In Place 

- Music Production workshops: in August and September 2020.
 

- Hip Hop classes: In collaboration with W21 alums in a new program called Hip Hop University NM. Workshops were conducted Sept-Oct 2020 and in February 2021. Instructors taught art and drawing, poetry, krump dance, popping dance, break dancing, and cartoon workshops.
 

- Theater: W21 collaborated and supported the SF Indian School Theater Department on a virtual theater video on the pandemic. 

- Recording: In January and February 2021, we conducted recording sessions with a local teen.

- Story Telling: The COVID KIDS Story Project - Students from the Santa Fe Indian School, (SFIS) and other youth in the surrounding area were invited to submit short stories on ‘Isolation’ and the impact of COVID-19. W21 also supported a virtual history class with students from e-Academy, an alternative school. Students from the also wrote thank you letters to essential workers. 

Summer 2021

(Our latest COOLaboration) 

Intersections is a citywide group art exhibition that takes place in public spaces across the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico and on a new and unique interactive website. Rather than pick a single theme or other unifying commonality to structure the exhibition, the Intersections website allows us to highlight multiple points of connection--the intersections--among a wide range of artworks and among a diverse group of artists who call Santa Fe home. You can sort the works of art by theme, medium, or location and the artists by professional and personal affiliation, in effect, creating hundreds of mini group exhibitions. Or, you can spend time learning about one artist and exploring their work in depth.

The destination >>>  website: https://intersections.vitalspaces.org

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You will also see yard signs, fence banners, posters and double sided panels all around Santa Fe starting this week. 

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS: Intersections was organized by Raashan Ahmad, Hannah Yohalem, and Rica Maestas from Vital Spaces, Ana Gallegos y Reinhardt from Warehouse 21, and Maida Branch from MAIDA.

Vital Spaces aims to create a vibrant, inclusive arts community, providing accessible spaces and opportunities to create, present, and experience quality art. We seek to enhance Santa Fe’s reputation as a contemporary art center by lifting up low-income and underrepresented artists and fostering connections across a diverse intersection of local artists, residents, and visitors.

Warehouse 21 supports a diverse, inclusive, positive, and welcoming community for young people by encouraging art, public service, mentoring, and meaningful exchange that challenges, empowers, and grows artistic development.

MAIDA is a love story, a coming home story. An ever evolving project and expression of ancestry, homecoming, diaspora forced and chosen, memory learned and lost, reclamation and preservation. Inspired by her family and the land from which they came, Maida Branch founded MAIDA in 2017 - an online collective of Indigenous and Indo-hispano artists. MAIDA supports and promotes their work and preservation of their homelands with a 50/50 profit sharing model. Artists’ stories are told through the history of northern New Mexico via thoughtfully curated products/objects, photography, and short films about community and place.

Intersections is sponsored by The City of Santa Fe Arts and Culture Department, Cultural Investment Funding Program, Digital Collaborative Impact Award. Additional funding provided by the Santa Fe Community Foundation.

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The Bike Art Project May 14, 2022 at Frenchies Park
Sponsored by the City of Santa Fe Arts & Culture Department.