Welcome to The Homie Front.

We are a network of artists, educators, and creative place-makers based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

We are working towards a future where people know each other better and play together more

Homie Front Ambassadors serve as relief educators while maintaining robust creative practices and collaborating to establish operational systems, community-partnered projects, and distributable materials that lay the foundation for a state wide network of artistic residencies facilitated through substitute teaching and public art events in MN.

Mission

Instigate humane engagement in society through education and art.

Vision

A nationwide cohort of artists, educators, and creative place-makers utilizing art as a strategic tool for education, collective concordance, and inter-community relationship building. A future where people know each other better, and play together more.

Strategy

Facilitate fellowship and coalition building opportunities for artists.

Nurture and/or facilitate projects and opportunities that support working class artists’ professional practices while positioning art as a strategic tool for serving society's essential needs.

Establish hubs of artist-educators in urban areas and serve as relief educators in local schools. Generate effective, play based engagement strategies and distributable materials.

Build partner relationships with rural and tribal communities. Facilitate regular, reoccurring residencies. Use substitute teaching as a point of departure for long-term investment and inter-community coalition building.

Goal

Establish a Minneapolis based cohort of artist-educators dedicated to building a state wide network of ongoing artistic residencies through substitute teaching and public art events in MN.

Pair practical burden relief with opportunities for fellowship and relationship building, with a mind to future systems building efforts.

Values

Everything is art, or can be.

What’s more important than art? Safe housing. Clean water. Healthy food. An appropriate education… From a sensible perspective, everything is more important than art. Unless, everything is art.

The process of creating art collaboratively contains essential skills for tomorrow’s youth: creative problem solving, effective communication, coalition building through common goals.

By serving as substitute teachers, we position artists to relieve practical burdens in environments experiencing scarcity. We are working with communities to integrate principles of artistic collaboration into practical solutions in the fields of education and community concordance. With time, we believe this strategy may be used to address the diverse obstacles scarcity presents.

Play is the most effective way to learn.

According to research done by the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development it “takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synaptic pathway in the brain, unless it is done with play, in which case, it takes 10-20 repetitions”.

We apply a playful approach to classroom management, socio-emotional learning, and general instruction. Over time, we intend to build an archive of 1 day youth workshops that use art as a strategy for teaching core subject matter.

Through these activities we intend for guest teacher days to become novel, enriching experiences for students and schools.

Trust is respect, enacted over time.

Relationships of integrity require time and consistent action. Our residency model utilizes a policy of visiting to facilitate relationships between artists and communities that move at the speed of trust.

Pairing service in schools with public art events and community open mics allows Homie Front Ambassadors to contribute to host-communities while nurturing fellowship and fostering authentic experiences.

We believe serving a practical need from a novel perspective is the key to building fruitful, longterm relationships with tribal, urban, and rural environments experiencing scarcity.

Love is always possible.

We are part of a species poem. Every human being on the planet has and is a contribution to the truthful rendering of that poetic verse.

The Homie Front Community Network is committed to honoring the dignified beauty inherent in all human life. Though it takes many forms, love is always possible.

We engage in conversation, nurture relationships, create art, and educate youth with compassion for the diverse frailties of human kind, and an enduring devotion to gaining deeper understandings of the many facets of humanity.

Service Audience

Primary Service Audience: hard to access communities experiencing scarcity with a focus on youth living in urban, tribal, and rural environments.

Secondary Service Audience: the network of artists, educators, and creative place-makers whose professional practices are supported by collective organizing.

Tertiary Service Audience: the public, who will have access to the inevitably meaningful works that form when artists sustain collaborative relationships with and in community.

Terms

Hard to Access: applies to physical, systemic, and cultural barriers to access. A willingness to navigate diverse obstacles with grace and good humor is central to The Homie Front’s success. We believe attention is the most valuable gift any one among us has to give in breathing lifetime, and that friendship is an essential resource.

Experiencing Scarcity: highlights common factors late stage capitalism brings to bear upon children’s bodies across cultural context: lack of access to housing, clean water, healthy food, and an appropriate education.

Urban, Tribal, Rural Environments: The Homie Front Community Network seeks to understand the patterns and mechanisms adversely affecting human communities whose social networks experience ongoing stress, while witnessing and celebrating the place-based person-hoods that occupy those places. We believe building relationships with these three groups of key cultural stakeholders will equip Homie Front Ambassadors with a broader understanding of the many facets of human nature. Communities THF serves will benefit through the strengthening of social bonds - and thereby public health & safety - that results from authentic friendship conducted in the public sphere.

Note: These terms are defined from a verb-based, context informed perspective. The Homie Front is engaged in the shared cultural effort of building systems that center right relationship and draw their authority from actions of ongoing care. With respect, and continued connection, we hope that Homie Front Ambassadors may be appropriately placed to facilitate coalitions across, between, and in the communities they serve.