Our Host Committee Kicks Off!!

WOW!! We did it!

After a few months of building the Portrait Project Host Committee, we were thrilled to finally get all 30 members together for a kickoff meeting on Tuesday, January 15th. The committee will be taking the reigns of community outreach, and it is an incredible group of movers and shakers across Winston-Salem – from community organizers, to educators, to artists, to faith leaders, and entrepreneurs. We’ll be introducing you to each of these amazing individuals over the coming weeks.

The evening began with dinner and everyone was charged to get to know someone new, and to introduce them to the group. Together, we reviewed the goals of the Winston-Salem Portrait Project

·      to connect residents together

·      to help communities see one another

·      to build bridges and challenge stereotypes through storytelling

·      to create a Public Art Project that represents and reflects the diversity of the city.

Everyone then huddled within their Ward Group to come up with an outreach plan for their community. Each group mapped their Ward, brainstorming all of the communities represented within. Each group will now move forward with their own plan of how they will they reach all these communities.

Over the next few months, the host committee will be out and about attending community meetings, hosting meet & greet events, and listening to you. They’ll be reaching out to you to nominate people to be portrayed in the project, collecting suggestions for eight of the artwork locations, and asking for words to describe your community.

A big thank you to Leadership Winston-Salem for generously hosting the meeting in their offices.

All photos by Aliyah Bryant, who is a current filmmaking student at The University of North Carolina School of the Arts.