Our Committment to Equity

With Art Encounter’s core belief that there are “many ways to see”, our organization has always valued the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our programs and processes. Still, as a 46-year-old organization, we humbly recognize that there are always new areas of growth. Here are some of the long-standing values we that we have held since our founding in 1978 around diversity, equity, and inclusion, and our current goals as we move forward as an organization over the next several years.

OUR CORE VALUES

EQUITABLE ACCESS TO ART. At Art Encounter, we believe that everyone should have access to art, and we uphold that this work is an act of social justice. We strive to make art free and accessible to the communities we serve. Most of our programs are supported by government grants, foundations, corporate sponsors, contracts with other non-profit organizations, and individual donations. Our Community Outreach programs, which serve under-resourced schools, senior residences, and social service agencies, are provided at no cost to participants. Our Mural Program makes art accessible and free to the entire community of Evanston by putting art directly on the streets. And while our Public and Member Programs do charge a fee, free and reduced pricing is always available. Art Encounter’s membership model on the whole also helps raise additional funds to support our free programming.

VALUING DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES. Whether we are providing arts learning to students in public schools, bringing visitors to an artist's studio, or leading a tour through a gallery, all of Art Encounter's programs are built around our signature discussion method which is based in asking questions of the viewer, rather than providing answers. Our facilitators and teaching artists promote an open learning environment that values multiple perspectives, and actively encourages all participants to share their unique perceptions in a safe, welcoming space. Leading with the assurance that “there are no wrong answers,” this process encourages learners of all ages to think independently, learn from each other, and explore the creative process with curiosity and open-mindedness. By committing to this approach, our programs bring forth the importance of diversity of thinking and the unique perspectives we all bring to the world.

INCLUSION AS A PRIMARY GOAL. By engaging with art in a social setting that values multiple perspectives, our programs strengthen connections among individuals and groups. When program participants, who come from a broad range of backgrounds and life experiences, have the ability to express their opinions in a safe and supportive space, they in turn listen actively to each other, learn from each other, and open their minds to other ways of seeing and perceiving. This process on the whole reaffirms our goal of inclusion by bringing people together through art, building community in any learning environment where we are conducting programs.

OUR COMMITTMENT TO GROWTH

Since 2020, Art Encounter has recommitted to defining our goals around diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to becoming a more actively anti-racist, anti-bias organization. We launched an Equity Team comprised of staff, board, and teaching artists in 2020, and through workshops and trainings, sharing of educational resources, and collaborative conversation over the course of 18 months, the group began to identify potential areas for growth in the organization. This foundational work led directly to a year-long organization-wide equity audit, led by external consultants Dr. Gilo Kwesi Logan and Carol Jungmann of the YWCA Equity Institute, which was completed in 2023.

From this formative process, we have developed four priority areas of growth for our organization over the next several years.

1) Articulating our Commitment to building a stronger equity culture within our organization: This involves revisiting our values, vision, and mission from a place that promotes equity, inclusivity, and anti-racism/anti-bias as a primary goal, to act as a guidepost for organizational planning on the whole.

2) Learning, Growing, and Evaluating: This involves ongoing professional development that we will commit to as an organization to keep growing on our journey towards equity, as well as planned internal evaluation of our programs, processes, and our people to further identify areas of growth.

3) Expanding our Leadership: This involves ongoing work to bring new voices into our organization, such as actively diversifying our board, staff, and teaching artists, and overall creating a broader perspective of voices within our leaders, deciders, and changemakers.

4) Applying an Equity Lens to all of our programs: This involves specific program improvements that we will make to our different programming areas that embrace anti-racism and anti-bias values. All these specific commitment areas have resulted in a written action plan for our Equity Team to carry out over the next two to three years.

In all, we recognize that work of diversity, equity, and inclusion requires continual introspection and action. This work is a process that will continue to evolve and change. As a 46-year-old organization, we are committed to this growth.