The arts have a unique ability to bridge barriers of politics, class and culture, to reorient perspective and open up dialogue about entrenched societal issues. In this belief, the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative (SBAC) is piloting an artist-in-residence program.

The program is based at the Community Arts Workshop (CAW), for artwork that meets community needs, bridges societal barriers, and fosters civic engagement with local issues, SBAC said.

The Arts Collaborative has announced that with funding from the Santa Barbara Foundation, it will be supporting three residency projects at the CAW in 2018.

The first, Going Home, begins work in February. It is a collaborative initiative between seven local teaching artists, led by Michael Morgan, Noah’s Anchorage Youth Crisis Shelter, and 5-8 youth who are homeless or recently were homeless.

Going Home “applies theater as a catalyst for problem solving,” the collaborative said. The residency uses a model set by Morgan’s work with the Odyssey Project.

Issues confronting the youth will be approached through theater improvisation and voice work, drawing, photography, spoken word, poetry and rap, “offering them choices about how they want to express themselves and to provide them with varied perspectives,” SBAC said.

The project will conclude with a theater performance and include organizing stakeholder and public discussion on the issues confronting the young people.

In April, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a team of local printmakers (Bay Hallowell, Sara Woodburn, Meagan Stirling, and project lead Claudia Borfiga) will conduct a series of printmaking workshops with sexual assault survivors and loved ones, in partnership with the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center.

Each printmaker brings years of experience in printmaking, teaching, and community engagement to the project. The workshops will provide an opportunity for support, creative expression, and empowerment, SBAC said.

The residency will culminate with a public exhibition of screen-printed banners and community dialogues on sexual assault.

Later in the year, a community-based storytelling theater project called Cuentos del Pueblo (Stories of the Town) will begin at the CAW, headed by Joseph Velasco, with Carlos Cuellar and Sio Tepper.

Cuentos del Pueblo draws on Velasco’s work with El Teatro Campesino and City at Peace Santa Barbara; Cuellar’s decades of work as a muralist, photographer and teaching artist; and Tepper’s experience a musician and co-founder of TOTEM.

It will “create a safe space for members of the community to come together and develop their own stories through a series of acting and storytelling workshops,” SBAC said.

The workshops will culminate in public performances based on the participants’ lives and experiences with a mural created by the participants serving as the backdrop or set of the show.

Performances will include audience interaction and dialogue about the issues brought up in the work.

“The arts residency program demonstrates how the arts can elevate important social issues and build bridges for constructive conversation,” said Sharyn Main, senior director of community investment at the Santa Barbara Foundation.

“It is our hope that the CAW will be recognized not just as a place for artists to work, but as a critical public space of civic engagement and conversation,” she said.

The Santa Barbara Foundation’s support and the piloting of this program allows the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative to develop the CAW’s potential and build its future as a public square for art and dialogue, SBAC said.

The Arts Collaborative is in the middle of capital campaign to renovate the CAW spaces to provide affordable and flexible workshop, gallery, performance, classroom, rehearsal, and open space to local artists, as well as residency programs.

More about the CAW is at www.sbcaw.org.

— Casey Caldwell for Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative.