Many people have experienced the power of art, whether they’ve realized it or not.
Maybe your breath caught while watching a movie or perhaps something stirred when you read a poem. It could even be a lyric in a song or the strokes in a painting that branded itself into your memory.
For one Delaware artist, this realization about art’s power set her life and career on a whole new path.
Leah Beach was in art school when she took on a vulnerable project: photographing her great grandmother who had dementia. As she captured the tragic reality of her great-grandmother’s experience, she realized that these photographs had the potential to touch more people.
“I saw the power that those photographs had and became really interested in how people lived with [dementia] in developing countries,” Beach said.
So, after searching through the depths of Google, Beach made a plan. She signed up to volunteer with a service organization in Kenya. She bought her plane ticket.
And then, of course, things didn’t go exactly as planned.
The service organization she was ready to join in Kenya had just informed her that they were shutting down their base due to lack of volunteer interest. But they still needed to support the people in need: Did she have any skills that could help them?
From graphic design to photography to mural work, Beach discovered that she could use her art skills to help uplift others. She established mentoring programs to combat malnutrition and worked in the health clinic to photograph and ship products that the women made there.
Even her dementia project expanded beyond what she had imagined, as she photographed people across the globe in Guatemala, South Africa and India.
“It really made me believe that there’s this link between artists,” Beach said. “We can do things that are kind of seamless when it comes to supporting other organizations. It doesn’t matter if it’s health or environment or whatever. There’s a lot of really good work that can happen there.”
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When Beach returned home to Dewey in 2014, this idea stayed with her and sparked the creation of a new artists organization now known as Developing Artist Collaboration.
What started out as a dream – and a checking account with only $200 to its name – has now grown into a thriving nonprofit with grants from renowned foundations, and a team of people who have overcome pandemic challenges by creating an e-commerce model and finding new ways to serve communities at the Delaware beaches.
Getting creative during COVID
Developing Artist Collaboration started as a group of artist friends hosting pop-up events where they could sell their art, like the popular Sip and Shop market in Dewey Beach over Black Friday weekend.
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But over time, the arts organization grew, and DAC became an official nonprofit in 2017. A year later, the group moved into its first building in West Rehoboth.
“The whole mission was to get artists’ work out there as much as possible and connect artists to the community,” Beach said. “And then in return for giving them these opportunities to grow their careers, we asked them to give back through community development.”
That mostly meant artists were displaying and selling their art, while also helping with after-school programs, creating murals or helping to cultivate community gardens.
The real shift in the organization came when DAC started hosting what they originally called Dirty Hands DIY. Now known as Out of the Box DIY, this program was an opportunity for members of the public to come into the nonprofit’s studio and create art projects.
After that, Beach said, she realized the group’s potential reached far beyond pop-up vendor events. They could now support artists through studio space, workshops and other resources, and the DIY program was a way to fund these new ideas for professional development.
Then, the pandemic hit.
Like many nonprofits, DAC struggled to get the financial support it needed to survive. They had just enough money to support operations for one month, but then what?
That’s when Beach and her team did what artists do best – they came up with a creative solution.
At the start of the pandemic, the artists put together craft kits that people could pick up at their site in West Rehoboth – an at-home version of the DIY projects that people had done in person.
What started out as a random idea thrown into a Facebook post, soon exploded. Beach quickly found herself making multiple trips to the store to pick up lumber and string, and then spending many days and nights sanitizing everything and packing it up.
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The DIY kits only grew more when Beach decided to take the venture online. She created a website and turned the kits into an e-commerce business. The kits sold all over the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia, and ultimately ended up providing for $40,000 in income for the nonprofit.
This all seemed to catch the attention of local supporters, too, because shortly after the kits took off, DAC received a $150,000 grant from the Longwood Foundation.
Suddenly, the nonprofit went from “how will we survive” to discovering a new entrepreneurial model that could support them in big ways.
With the income from the kits, DAC returned to its idea of investing back in their artists by forming the Creative Career Support Program – an intensive marketing and professional development program for artists.
“We’ve been developing that over the last two years,” Beach said. “It’s amazing how much it’s been changing artists’ lives in our community.”
This program and other resources have supported artists people may recognize in the community, such as photographer Elliot MacGuire who has almost 35,000 followers on Facebook, or local artist Laura Erickson who has attracted admirers with her peaceful paintings.
What’s next
This is just the beginning, though. Developing Artist Collaboration has big plans for the coming year and beyond.
At the start of 2021, Beach had one other full-time employee. Now, she has been able to hire four full-time and seven part-time staff members.
DAC has also grown to include four locations: one building that includes 18 art studios, a space in West Rehoboth where the artists host a weekly art market and two other buildings that include studios and eventually the future DAC headquarters.
While the nonprofit continues to focus on the e-commerce side of Out of the Box DIY, just this month they’ve opened a new retail shop where people can come in to purchase the kits and other merchandise that support the artists.
What makes these craft kits unique, Beach said, is that the final product is typically functional as well as decorative. For example, people can make candles, bottle openers or ornaments. The staff members are also all full-time artists.
After remodeling a space to better support the online Out of the Box DIY store, Beach said she hopes to create a new physical space that she describes as an “apothecary style art experience.” She imagines the space having a 50-seat bar where people can come, sit down and create a craft like candles – doing everything from scooping out their own soy wax to picking out a fragrance from a selection on the wall.
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All the income from these efforts ultimately goes back into supporting the programs that DAC offers for artists, as well as boosting the community development projects that the nonprofit takes on.
It’s these projects, which bring the artists and the community together, that are at the core of DAC, according to Beach. They’re also an extension of where she started when she was creating art and supporting different organizations in Kenya.
“All of my dreams with this,” she said,” they’ve arrived,” she said.
The biggest and most recent example of this community work is the West Rehoboth mural. When the nonprofit found its home in West Rehoboth, the team realized they were stepping into a neighborhood that has a deep history.
The coastal neighborhood used to be home to generations of African American families who raised children and owned successful businesses there. But over time – as the neighborhood experienced hardships from the illegal drug trade, economic decline and eventual gentrification – the history of West Rehoboth and its significance to Black communities in coastal Delaware seemed to be disappearing.
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Beach and DAC want to help make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s why they’re partnering with the local nonprofit West Side New Beginnings and its leader Brenda Milbourne to create an educational mural.
Developing Artist Collaboration has hired renowned muralist Terrance Vann, a West Rehoboth native, who will begin working in 2022. The mural will include portraits of the founding families with QR codes that link to videos and stories about the history of West Rehoboth.
“This whole mural project is 100% dictated by the community,” Beach said. “It’s going to be a really cool multimedia experience for people to learn about West Rehoboth.”
From there, Beach said she wants to continue to find ways to honor their community and partner with more organizations, both on a local and international level, that are doing good. Put simply, she wants to keep making a difference through art.
“We literally are going to change the way that people view arts organizations. Because we don’t support the arts – we support artists,” she said. “I think that’s the foundation of an art movement.”
Emily Lytle covers Sussex County from the inland towns to the beaches. Got a story she should tell? Contact her at elytle@doverpost.com or 302-332-0370. Follow her on Twitter at @emily3lytle.
