OUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS
We have learned alongside our Community Partners as they have faced challenges, overcome barriers, and achieved extraordinary successes. Find out more about each project and the outcomes below.
YEAR
2007
GRANT CATEGORY
Culture
GRANT AMOUNT
$104,000
Organization:
Rude Mechanicals Theater Collective
Project Title:
Grrl Action
Project Description:
Rude Mechanicals is an ensemble-based theatre company committed to collaboratively developing brave new works for the stage, presenting artists of national acclaim, training young theatre artists, providing Austin with a year-round multi-arts performance facility, and ensuring that every citizen in Austin has access to the arts regardless of economic status.
With the Impact Austin grant, Rude Mechanicals will expand its Grrl Action program to a year-round arts education program for teenage girls designed to build self-esteem, individual strengths and an understanding of others through the creation of individualized arts projects completed alongside adult women mentors.
Grant Status:
Rude Mechanicals reports that the year-round program for Grrl Action has been a great success, with the number of participants continuing to grow every year, more girls creating more projects and learning techniques in more art forms.
During the grant period, a total of forty-one girls were served, each paired with a professional mentor to provide support during the development of her project. The community has been so responsive to the call for mentors that more have volunteered than Rude Mechanicals can currently match with Grrl Action participants.
Per the plan, Rude Mechanicals acquired equipment to enable a variety of projects, including a video camera, video projector, two iMac computers for film editing and graphic design, software for professional film editing, an external hard drive, and various other video-related materials, books and software.
The build out of the classroom/rehearsal annex took much longer than expected and wasn’t completed until nearly a year after the end of the grant period. After receiving the Impact Austin grant, Rude Mechanicals obtained a pro bono architectural design for the space which was more expensive, requiring additional funds to be raised before the project could be started. Renovations began in the fall of 2009, and at last in April 2010, the city issued the occupancy certificate for “The Off Shoot” (as dubbed by Grrl Action), located in a wing off the Rude Mechanicals main facility, “The Off Center”. On May 15, 2010, The Off Shoot premiered its first event, Grrl Wrap 2010, “A Festival of Art and Performance by Teen Girls.”
The girls now have a space to call their own, where they can dream up their projects, meet with their mentors, develop new skills and share their works with the public. Rude Mechanicals reports that the Impact Austin grant enabled them to reach more girls throughout the year while keeping their commitment to individualized support for each girl’s artistic goals.