Key Partnerships
ACPPA Community Arts Center
Artists Cooperative for Personal and Professional Advancement (ACPPA) was founded in 2004 with a mission to provide access to opportunities that use art to promote an improvement in quality of life. In 2006, they initiated their Community Art Center in response to a lack of affordable and continuous arts education in the Norristown community. Through the Center’s holistic teaching methods, art acts as a catalyst that strengthens individual power, nurtures creative self expression, and revitalizes self, family, and community.
The goals of ACPPA are to:
- Make arts education accessible by offering classes, workshops, and performances at little or no cost to Norristown families.
- Positively influence and inspire by instilling a positive sense of self through the creative process and self expression.
- Provide exposure to diverse cultural experiences.
- Employ professional teaching artists that go beyond teaching to also serve as mentors.
- Offer a comprehensive approach to exploring the arts, encouraging students to push themselves to take risks both within the classroom and within themselves.
- Celebrate the arts by providing support for teaching artists within the community and celebrating creative and intellectual achievements of area artists, performers, and cultural organizations.
Bryn Mawr's partnership with ACPPA is new as of 2009 but already has many layers. College student volunteers have assisted in the center's once a month "Family Paint Jam" night, a family get-together where families make art and have dinner with their children. Students have also volunteered to teach and design their single or multiple session workshops—during the fall 2009 semester, three students are taught Partner Yoga to mothers and children. n addition, a Community Based Work Study federal work-study position was created at ACPPA and was filled by a Bryn Mawr student, who now works at the organization for 10 hours per week. Finally, Bryn Mawr students have participated in advocacy and lobbying activities to promote arts funding in Norristown and lobby for art education in the Norristown school district.
