I serve as the Community Outreach Manager at Craft Alliance in St. Louis, MO.

The on-going engagement with our St. Louis communities has broadened my understanding of the arts and their social applications, while sharpening the focus of my own personal studio practice – the overlap has been invaluable.

Craft Alliance has consistently defined itself as an environment for artists, collectors, students, and the art-viewing public to begin new conversations.  The mixing of ideas, perspectives, and skills allows us as individuals to connect ourselves to a larger context outside of our own subculture; to become a community.

As a director of programming, I believe it is vital to create space and opportunity for the varied St. Louis communities to come together.  Our programming is built to stimulate the creative potential of our students.  They come from all over the city, from different schools, from different neighborhoods; their family lives are all very different.  The nature of our programs engages our students, together in the culture of craft.

Our Community Outreach programming has been illustrative of the fact that a student doesn’t just do something else; he or she becomes something else.  As an organization we have witnessed what our students become through their studio work.  Our students are applying their experiences at Craft Alliance to a larger context.  Even if they don’t pursue careers in art, they have developed something new that is central to who they are as people, and that is going to lead to a more enriching and successful life.

Robert Longyear

Studio Artist

Craft Alliance Community Outreach Manager

CAT Fellow 2003

St. Louis