Growing More Food on Main St | Taking Root Community Garden

Being able to feed our working class families right now is more crucial than ever. Back in September 2018 we funded Taking Root Community Garden to build garden beds for refugees and Highland Park residents at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Main St. Consider this months grant phase 2, two years later. Our $3,000 went to build out more beds and add a rainwater cistern that are already being used for Fall planting. Growing familiar foods as well as the non judgmental, social interaction in a garden cannot be reproduced anywhere else. Making sure refugees who are new to our area can make a successful transition and become contributing members of the community will benefit Chattanooga as a whole.

Rock and Roll Art Car | Art 120

You would have to travel to Baltimore, Maryland or Houston, Texas to experience an art car as spectacular (take that, Nashville) as the one that now lives in Chattanooga. Master art teacher, Rebecca Bass, has gifted us her latest, student-led, collaborative art car entitled, "It's Only Rock and Roll". This moving tribute celebrates the history, music, and art of the 60's and 70's while featuring several different visual art mediums students can experience firsthand. We are now the art car capital of the region, thanks to Kate Warren of Art 120. "It's Only Rock and Roll" has already been featured on the the History Channel during Car Week and there is talk about doing a documentary on how the car was made. It’s pretty epic.

What did we fund if the car was free? Transporting it to Chattanooga from Houston. Fortunately just in time for the Mainx24 parade December 1st. After that, "It's Only Rock and Roll" serves as a teaching tool for art and career track education students in Hamilton County. It reaches some of the thirty-two elementary schools in Chattanooga that do not have an art program and animates local public events with her presence. Yes, its a she.

Soil Resources | NEEMA Community Garden

We have a saint among us. Her name is Charlene Nash. Read about her work helping farmers in Africa here. After a recent trip to Madagascar, Charlene will be assisting Father Peter Kanyi build out the community garden of NEEMA, the Kiswahili name for grace. NEEMA promotes self-sufficiency for refugee and immigrant individuals and families by providing advocacy, support and education in the Chattanooga area. The community garden on Main St is in need of building materials to make it more productive and a more comfortable gathering place, while still remaining mobile if it needed to move, for the immigrant farmers growing foods familiar to them in their home country.

This $3,000 grant benefits all refugees who garden at NEEMA as well as those in the neighborhood with beds of their own. With all the services NEEMA provides (culture counseling, housing, medical care, pastoral care, transportation, translation, ESL classes, etc), the garden just adds another human, friendly dimension to an already confusing transition for many refugees/immigrants. Growing familiar foods as well as the non judgmental, social interaction in a garden cannot be reproduced anywhere else. Making sure these people who are new to our area can make a successful transition and become contributing members of the community will benefit Chattanooga as a whole.

Land and Sea | Stove Works

Stove Works, in collaboration with Daniel Fuller, Curator of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, introduces the exhibition, LAND AND SEA. Through sculpture, video, painting, and sound, LAND AND SEA explores how water, air, and soil, those specifically of Chattanooga and East Tennessee, are altered, inhabited, mythologized, reduced, abused, explored, and celebrated. LAND AND SEA will comprise five separate exhibitions. The series will take place within proximity to the Stove Works site, along Main Street. Each show will be complemented by programming carefully designed to draw out different aspects of each show, extending meaning and relationships not only into other realms of art but also out of the gallery and into the world.

From opening night, August 10th, through closing September 9th you can view all the events here. Everything from a foraging walk with Lauren Hays of Wooden Spoon Herbs to a film screening of Two Went In, 2018 by Erica Scoggins will peak your interest and fulfill your arts desires. Our $2,000 helps Stove Works forge the way into an exciting future for the arts in CHA.