The outcome of my research project is to increase awareness regarding the continuous efforts being made by Providence, RI (PVD) community organizers and the work done to push their practices in the direction towards supporting local artists. Using teacher/practitioner based + arts based research and autoethnography, I’ll be exploring how leaders within the local art community strive to preserve what we recognize as The Creative Capital. Commonly known for being a city offering artists of all disciplines the capability to pursue their craft while being able to maintain a sustainable practice. My history of being involved with various non-profit art organizations throughout Providence as a youth artist helped mold me as a student, learner, and leader. My previous and current collaborations with these orgs now help me grow as an instructor, allowing me access to the explorations necessary in the development of my pedagogical practice within art education. 

For my thesis project- I’ll be creating a public art piece consisting of a billboard advertisement located in downtown Providence. The billboard will be displaying a design I made that is my own reimagination of the RISD logo/crest that replays the acronym to say the word “SOUR” instead. This directly relates to the personally lived intersectionality between my RISD + Providence Art Community experiences.
Additionally, there will be a website link included that  brings you to a site containing information on resources available in support to locally based artists and RI residents. Some of the information included on the website will be accessible community artist studios, non-profit art organizations, artist residency programs, youth arts programming, and more. I intend to collaborate with local artists, community organizers, and employees of nonprofits/art programs throughout PVD. I’ll be working with Lamar Advertising for the contracting  production of this billboard project. 
 

For as long as I can remember creating, public art has been one of my favorite devices to create pathways to further inform others and increase awareness to a broad-ranging audience. By creating my own version of a guerilla marketing campaign the purpose of this billboard project is to promote services that help sustain local artists. From holding the support that’s been gracefully given to me in high regards, I wanted to use this public art project as an opportunity to pay homage and utilize this platform for the purpose of publicly sharing the various types of art programming, services, and grant funding that is provided by several local art organizations here in PVD. As a student who grew up in Providence, I want this billboard to be the start of a bigger discussion about how the roles of local artists echo throughout the Providence Art Community and RISD. 

I’ll be using my public art as a tool to engage with a broader audience while simultaneously targeting marginalized artists coming from similar backgrounds. I want to be an example shown to local emerging youth artists, considering that we're the smallest state and an even smaller city- goals towards a career in the arts can seem unachievable. The billboard should be used as a source of motivation and inspiration, showing that if you put the work into your craft- even if it's provocative, anything is capable of being accomplished through art. Being a low income artist has forced me to navigate and find ways to sustain my practice while still supporting myself. And while being at RISD I’ve gone out my way to offer myself as a source of information for my peers, primarily by giving them resources and recommendations for opportunities to sell or display their artwork locally. 

I want this project to focus on how the efforts and work of local artists help support and sustain what we know as The Creative Capital. This will include highlighting and giving recognition to art based organizations here including AS220, New Urban Arts, The Dirt Palace, RISCA + ACT, and much more. These organizations are impactful on the community by being a resource to provide artist opportunities and give support for grants, residencies, gallery shows, vending gigs, public art, studio space, etc. Providence is so unique because anyone can be a full time artist while having a sustainable practice here. And as someone who is a part of the Providence art community and RISD, I feel as if the students here need to know about the efforts that go into the different local opportunities here that provide pathways to artists early on in their career.         

In correlation to my research question, “How do my efforts as a local artist / educator / community organizer, + those coming from similar backgrounds as my own, help provide pathways for artists early on in their career— and teach them how to create their own?”; these artists' resources are important for me to share because those same pathways are what gave me guidance, especially during my youth development, to help get me where I am today being a practicing artist and student in higher education. It’s additionally what actually initially inspired me to become a community organizer myself. I want this project to show how the work of community organizers and artists help keep Providence alive.  This project will further benefit and display the voices of residents within the PVD/local arts community while also giving an amazing opportunity for local artists to support and sustain their practice.         

Public art has been one of my biggest inspirations to me since I was a child and as a young developing artist. My practice now is heavily rooted in public art and has become one of my biggest passions devolving into my career. In my overall research and inquiry within art pedagogy, a discovery that has been fundamental towards my community engagement is the demand for access to information on resources that are available in support of local Providence and Rhode Island based artists, hence the “Lizzy Sour School of Design'' billboard. I largely believe that there is a well overdue obligation RISD should have in making better efforts towards bridging the Providence Art Community within this institution. Regardless of it being subjective to me as a local artist, more than obviously there is a hierarchy RISD has that  always further divided College Hill and the rest of Providence.

The range of educational experiences I have within local arts programming from being a  student/learner progressing to now becoming an arts educator/instructor, those encounters are what helped create the coming together of Lizzy Sour and Elizabeth Jweinat, from being the mentee to the becoming of a mentor. As someone who came from Providence and was placed in this rigorous competitive institution that heavily differs from the support I was used to receiving from my local art community while still residing in my hometown was extremely conflicting. And as a right of passage, moving forward I want to be someone who got what I needed from RISD to better myself as a creative, and now be able to return back to my community that helped initially get me to this point and apply those structures learned to help further grow and expand those same pathways today.