GRACE - Grass Roots Art and Community Effort: Vermont

Vermont's Grass Roots Art and Community Effort Since 1975

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Howard Community Services

Location
This energetic workshop takes place in the spacious basement community room of the First United Methodist Church in downtown Burlington (Vermont’s largest city). The workshop program is contracted by Howard Community Services, a division of the Howard Center for Human Services. Howard Community Services serves individuals with developmental disabilities and their families.

Besides providing a setting for GRACE workshops, the community room serves many functions throughout the week from giant rummage sales to AA meetings and to Fellowship dinners. We are encouraged to use the space as a permanent gallery . Large exhibits from this workshop have been held throughout the Burlington area. Art work is also exhibited on a rotating basis at the offices of Howard Community Services.

Numbers
50 or more Howard ‘consumers’ (20 to 25 per workshop) many of them accompanied by a support person; one, 2-hour morning and one, 2-hour afternoon session each week throughout the year.

History
GRACE began working with Howard Community Services in the spring of 1994 in a six-week pilot program for adults with developmental disabilities. The experiment was so successful that the workshops were expanded to 44 weeks in 1995. A second workshop was added the following year to meet the increased demand. Howard Community Services now contracts with GRACE to fully fund one hundred workshops per year.

“GRACE Project workshops have been a great success with our consumers. Approximately fifty people participate each week, many of them demonstrating increasing self-confidence and pride in their evolving artistic efforts. GRACE instructors foster an atmosphere of openness and respect for the creative process at all levels of cognitive and physical ability, offering participants the opportunity to explore new media and develop modes of expression at their own pace... The GRACE Project has been a wonderful addition to our educational programming at Howard Community Services, affording many of our consumers a profoundly life-enhancing creative experience.”

- Amy Roth, Fmr. Community Access Coordinator, Howard Community Services

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