On September 18, 2020, Snow City Arts hosted hundreds of guests from Chicago’s philanthropic, medical, corporate, and artistic communities in our first ever virtual Gallery Night 2020: ACTIVATING ART. Following a short public showcase on YouTube Live (click here to see the artchive), a 60 minute ticketed event streamed on Zoom included student interviews, a virtual gallery of SCA student works from all of our six disciplines. Ninety-nine works by seventy four students was featured and can now be seen in short clips or as part of the entire event archive here. “Dear Nurses” written and performed by SCA student Terrance, age 10, was a particular hit, as was its reprise by a remote chorus of SCA Teaching Artists.
Inclusion through accessibility is a core value of Snow City Arts, and through our partnership with The Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium (CCAC), SCA was able to access a superb ASL interpreter and live closed caption interpreter for Gallery Night. In addition, English and Spanish live description was offered on two dedicated phone lines to provide a fuller experience for visually impaired guests.
This year’s benefit honored long time hospital partner, University of Illinois Children’s Hospital and Comprehensive Assessment & Treatment Unit with the Neisser Award. Drs. Mary Lou Schmidt, Lewis Hsu, Elizabeth Clayton, and Michael Naylor accepted the award on behalf of UIC.
Through the generosity of our sponsors, ticketed attendees, auction donors and bidders, art buyers, donors and pro-bono partners, Snow City raised $86,000 to continue our efforts in fueling SCA virtual learning programs and grant the transformative gift of arts education to hundreds of students annually across three Chicagoland hospitals. With far lower expenses this year, due to the incredible efforts of more student participants than ever before, our intrepid curation and production teams, and the generous in kind editing support of Angelo Bosco, anda stellar tech team, we were able to net almost $70,000 despite ongoing restrictions and changes in plan we have all experienced over the past year.
A full version of Gallery Night and other reels will be up on our website this week here.
Thank you for your patience and support as we progress along a learning curve! We have been thrilled to hear directly from many of you about how effective this year’s program was in allowing student voices and works to speak for themselves and for sharing a clear portrait of the value of our work inspiring and educating children and youth in hospitals through the arts, particularly at this time.
We will be sending a survey soon for more feedback as we imagine virtual and hybrid events are here to stay. Shoot us an email at danielle@snowcityarts.org if you just can’t wait to share your feedback!
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