Author: Brenna McCallum
To understand the evolving impact of COVID-19 on the state’s arts network, the North Carolina Arts Council sent a survey to all 2021-22 grantees. We asked many quantitative questions and were also interested in learning about the less measurable aspects of COVID-19’s effect on how organizations do their work. We received 200 survey responses, with many organizations indicating they had a unique story to share about unexpected opportunities or innovations that arose from the pandemic.
As the Arts Council evaluated the data received from the survey, we also conducted group sessions to hear first-hand testimonies and reflections from organizations. From October 2021 to January 2022, we held five such sessions and heard from nearly 40 organizations. Some themes rose to the top. North Carolina arts organizations described the following commitments:
- Supporting artists who were financially impacted by the pandemic
- Facilitating safe, innovative programming
- Engaging children who were experiencing the detrimental effects of isolation
- Delivering opportunities for healing experiences during a time when physical gatherings were impossible
The Sparks of Light series explores what the past two years have meant for the arts. The commitments just listed are a testament to the ways in which North Carolina arts organizations continue to exhibit resilience and dedication during a time of unprecedented struggle and darkness. The stories staff told when they met with us on Zoom over the past four months are important and inspiring. Sparks of Light will gather some of them and share them with you.
Although converting school classrooms and after-school programs into virtual iterations was necessary to keep children and families safe from the virus, it was also highly disruptive and, for many, isolating. Routines were upended, and parents and children alike struggled to maintain not only the day-to-day motions of life but also their mental well-being. Arts organizations jumped in to help with whatever resources they had.
Arts for all students
Pocosin Arts School, in the coastal town of Columbia in Tyrell County, was one such organization. It had very recently published its 2020 curriculum for adults and children when the pandemic hit, and everything shifted. Translating as many in-person classes and workshops as possible into virtual offerings became imperative. Most urgently, Pocosin wanted to ensure that young students would still be able to engage creatively with after-school programming. A virtual instruction set-up—with a camera positioned directly over the instructor’s work—allowed Pocosin to serve more students at a time, by giving everyone a front-row seat. So, instead of cutting back on after-school and regular adult workshop offerings, Pocosin ramped them up. Normally, the programs serve 450 students a year; delivered virtually, they have served 5,000. Since the pandemic began, Pocosin has held more than 600 workshops geared to adults and kids, who are logging on not just locally but also nationally and internationally. Pocosin plans to retain these expansions as the pandemic subsides.
Pocosin realized that some local students would lack easy online access to its workshops; to reach them, it enlisted its resident artists to create art activity kits, and then connected with local schools to deliver those kits. Schools were already sending school supplies and meals to children’s homes. Pocosin was able to add the art kits to those deliveries, and reached every elementary school-age child in Columbia.
Kid-driven public art
Craven Arts Council, in New Bern, knew that another problem kids had during the pandemic was the loss of opportunities to socialize and collaborate. In response, the organization designed and fabricated a metal frame covered in chicken wire for a large-scale sculpture of two clasped hands. The council contacted Boys and Girls Clubs, libraries, and other such local resources to recruit children. Then it brought five or six at a time to the sculpture site, gave them lunch, and explained their role in the project. The children’s task was to cover the frame with papier-maché, design a color scheme and pattern, and paint the object. The resulting sculpture, titled “Unity,” stands twelve feet tall and “represents the unity and strength of [the] community when working together.” About 100 children participated in the process. Staff of the Craven Arts Council said that those involved were proud of their creation and their community.
Helping children understand COVID-19
As the pandemic worsened, parents wondered how to talk to their kids about what was happening. When Blair, a nonprofit press based in Durham, learned that the writer Beth Bacon and the illustrator Kary Lee had created a book for children about COVID-19, it decided to jump the normal schedule and put the book into production right away. Titled COVID-19 Helpers, and published in November 2020 in English and Spanish hard-cover and paper editions, the book “gives kids the facts of the pandemic, but also offers hope,” according to the publisher. The publisher and author opted to leave publishing rights to the book open, which led to international versions being published in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Schools in Granville and Buncombe Counties bought the books in bulk and gave them out to their students. Thanks to donors, the publisher was also able to donate books to the Charlotte Bilingual School. The book was chosen from 260 entries to win the 2020 Emory Global Health Institute Children's eBook Competition, and the institute published a digital edition. Given the book’s success, the author and illustrator teamed up to create another children’s book about COVID-19: Helping Our World Get Well. This book, which Blair published in November 2021, shows how “kids can do their part to help heal the world and stop the pandemic by getting a COVID vaccine.”
The effects of the pandemic will become clearer as time passes, but we know that children’s lives have been unsettled. The stories shared here demonstrate the vital role that arts organizations have played in providing services to help children enjoy and participate in the arts, safely socialize, and understand the pandemic in an age-appropriate context. Together they are yet another example of the impact on people of all ages that arts organizations have across this state.
For more stories about how arts organizations have navigated the pandemic with strength and determination, check out the latest season of the North Carolina Arts Council's podcast, Arts Across NC, wherever you listen to podcasts.