Buffalo Arts Studio - Creatives Rebuild New York

The Collaboration

Aitina Fareed-Cooke worked with Buffalo Arts Studio (BAS) to help their marketing efforts and deepen their commitment to supporting young artists of color. Aitina utilized her art to capture and share the stories of artists, entrepreneurs, and community leaders in and around the Buffalo community. Through media arts, prose, photography, music, and digital storytelling, she helped increase awareness and visibility for creatives and community leaders while mentoring a new generation of storytellers, including teenagers, college students, and recent college graduates.

Through her mentorship, three cohorts of emerging artists worked on a selection of projects while building on their own artistic voices, learning technical and soft skills, all while providing valuable documentation and media content for Buffalo Arts Studio. Aitina offered a variety of creative arts workshops within the community while creating opportunities for emerging artists to earn income and to gain insight on ways to maintain a professional creative career.

The Organization

Buffalo Arts Studio is committed to creating cultural connections in our community through exhibitions, public art, and educational programs. We also provide exposure and affordable studio space for local visual artists. Buffalo Arts Studio is a catalyst for self-empowerment and for the cultivation of new ideas and actions to enhance our region.

The exhibition opening reception featuring Fokus’d Kreatives not only culminated Aitina’s Tales From the Porch Extension project, but was a living representation of our mutual goals to empower young artists, attract new diverse audiences, and celebrate what makes our collaboration special. Alma M. Carrillo, Executive Director

One of the collaboration's highlights for me, as an artist, was the support and trust of a group of fierce women. I'm grateful for the space and freedom to be creative which in turn allowed me to impact many artists and community members through the arts. Aitina Fareed-Cooke

A highlight of our collaboration is how more community members saw themselves in the art, the artists, and inside our gallery space. The beautiful documentation that came from this collaboration bears witness to our mutual commitment to making art representational, inclusive, and accessible.