Kulture Klub Collaborative

Fashion Design with Mimi: This is a program where youth learned how to upcycle and design their own clothes from already used materials. This empowered our youth to put more thought and creativity in how they present themselves and what type of brand they want to show the world going forward. They not only upcycled clothing, but they also crocheted clothes as well. This boosted their confidence and skill level and for a few youth they are now interested in joining the world of textiles. We've had 2 youth featured in two fashion shows since this program. One of our youth will now conduct classes and put on his own fashion show this fall. They also gained skills in altering their own clothes to add their own signature and these are clothes they can wear for job interviews. After learning the skills of creating their own garment they put on a fashion show showcasing their work with the advantage of selling their garment. They participated in every aspect of putting on a fashion show from designing and sewing their looks to casting their models to choosing the runway music. Despite your background, everyone cares how they look and this project was definitely something our youth were proud of doing and honed their skills of collaboration, creation, design, and communication. We worked with Mimi Nguyen of LPF Vision. For the fashion show we had 3 youth show their work, 3 youth perform, and 1 youth created artwork for the event. We also had 7 local professional designers show their work. Over the 3 months of this program we served 156 youth with 31 of the youth we served being new.

Open Mic Thursdays: We were able to support 25 youth by giving stipends for Open Mic that we held on a weekly basis. Open Mic Thursday was a program where youth not only were able to perform original songs, poems, give inspirational speeches, and share stories of their lives, they also helped create a safe and sacred space where respect, open-mindedness, and creativity was fostered. From Jan-Dec we served 558 youth with 110 new participants.

Painting Hip Hop: This was a program led by teaching artist Meyer Warren aka St. Paul Slim. He's a professional artist that has done murals and paintings in government buildings and art galleries around the Twin Cities. In this program youth learned the different elements of hip hop and used those elements and applied it to their lives to make an abstract painting. They learned different types of styles and incorporated those styles into their work. They also were able to showcase their work in the gallery space of KKC. We served a total of 94 youth with 23 new youth joining us.

Ongoing mission focused programming that engages art and artistic practice to provide enriching multidisciplinary opportunities for youth experiencing homelessness and artists to grow individually and to transform community