About Us
Dandelion Arts Collective advances and promotes health equity through performing arts practices. Using performing arts modalities, we support healthy interpersonal and community-level relationships, reduce adverse health injustices, and contribute to a larger culture of health in our local community. We hope to remove barriers to arts access for communities most targeted by structural inequities. We believe in the power of arts in public health to build equity and social connection, support childhood development, and foster advocacy and agency. In addition to the direct health benefits of arts participation, our organization utilizes the arts to advance health data, improve public health awareness and education, and foster structural and sociocultural changes to increase health.
Our Mission…
Our Vision…
Our vision is a world where everyone has access to the healing power of the arts. We believe that the arts have the power to inspire positive change and to bring people together across differences. Through our partnerships with local community centers, artists, young people and social service organizations we are collectively envisioning a future where the arts are at the center of a more just and equitable society.
Our programming focuses on areas such as:
Mental health
Child development
Environmental stewardship
Social justice for intersections of systemically undervalued populations (LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, etc.)
Comprehensive, shame-free sexuality education
Collaborative process-based performance
Community resources, structural family support, and MORE!
We are a mobile program reaching thousands of community members each year in Longmont, Loveland, Boulder, Lafayette, Broomfield, Westminster, Northglenn, Frederick, Fort Collins, and beyond!
We create meaningful artistic experiences for our participants to increase
Public health education, resources, and services
Intrinsic motivation to engage in activities that enhance well-being
Artistic literacy and skills as a positive contributor to multiple modalities of intelligence and education
Participants feeling of interconnectedness and belonging with others and the world in which they exist
Frequency and number of community members modeling and creating health-promoting activities and equitable health policies
Confidence and capacity of community members to be positive change-makers for health equity and social justice
Increasing community-centered collaboration across arts and other disciplines to address the root social and environmental changes needed to support healthy communities
Artistic Statement
At Dandelion Arts collective, we acknowledge the existence of systemic racism, ableism, sexism, and other forms of oppression that create inequities across health care, education, wealth, and more. These intersections of injustice negatively affect all people; and yet, they most often harm people of the global majority, children, women, LGBTQIA+, and disabled folks.
Liberation from these systems takes conscious effort and understanding of their interconnections.
We recognize current deficits in our representation, equality, and power-sharing, as an organization.
Currently, our programming is only being offered in English with leadership and direction from white-presenting cis females and not representing our entire community.
We believe in the strengths of our community and humbly hope to contribute in the spirit of co-learning and cultural humility. We consciously build programming and work in equal partnership with the full range of the humans we aim to serve. We welcome and ask those from experiences different than our own to partner with us and become part of our program.
Program Accessibility Notes
* Instruction in English
* Wheelchair Accessible Spaces
* A community welcoming all identities and abilities
Please connect for any assistance, including financial, to help eliminate restrictions that would prevent your ability to participate in our programs