Mesa Arts Center: Helping Service Members Find Strength Through Art

When Arizona’s Mesa Arts Center launched its Arts in Service program seven years ago, the idea was to give service members and veterans a space to explore their creativity, free from financial barriers. What began as a small pilot project has since grown into a full-time program that serves a thriving community.

Initially conceived by executive director Mandy Tripoli, the Arts in Service program was first made possible thanks to a grant from Boeing, and it has grown “beyond our wildest expectations,” said Laura Wilde, Mesa Arts Center’s director of studios. During the initial eight-week sessions in 2018, “all the students were wonderful, and then we took the next year to continue learning about the military community and the individual needs of service members and veterans. By the end of 2019, we were able to get the program full-time, and we kept it going through Covid. It’s grown into this big, beautiful program.” Boeing continues its sponsorship, alongside partners like United Way and the National Endowment for the Arts.

At its core, Arts in Service provides free classes designed to help participants achieve personal goals, including stress relief and creative growth, or simply to try something new—all expenses covered. It’s not just studio art, either—classes this fall include advanced welding, African drumming, short story writing, flameworking, and creating cabochons. Each spring, there’s an exhibition of work created by participants. Military families aren’t left out; family members can get involved through a subprogram called We Serve Too.

For Wilde, the program resonates on a personal level. “My grandfather served in the military. I have two cousins that I’m close with that served in the Marines. My husband served in the Army National Guard and did a year in Afghanistan,” she said. Her connections and those of other staff members with service backgrounds, whether individual or familial, help the program meet participants where they are.

The program also creates unexpected opportunities for dialogue across generations of veterans. “One of the really interesting stories that came out of this is, one of our printmaking instructors, Ron Bimrose, he served in Vietnam. He said, ‘I haven’t talked about it since I came back. It was just really tough for me. I put everything in my bag, and I threw it up in the attic. I tried to forget about it.’ Through this program, he actually started talking about it more and more. I just think that’s a really cool story.”

Arts in Service also emphasizes personal growth and self-compassion. “We’ve heard feedback that it’s nice for some of the service members and veterans to get out of their own head,” Wilde said. “We emphasize giving yourself some grace. Our instructors have a couple of things they need to say each week. One of them is to constantly reiterate, ‘I’ve been doing this for 30 years. It took a long time. Be gentle with yourselves if you don’t crush it straight out of the gate.’“

To support participants, Mesa Arts Center recently introduced a Peer Ambassador program, hiring a veteran to work with students on-site and connect them to trusted community resources. “We’ve had students struggling with civilian reintegration, or, especially in creative writing, which is insanely vulnerable, having a hard time sharing stories, but still wanted to.” The Peer Ambassador builds relationships with the students so they can receive resources in a safe space.

Above all, Arts in Service reflects Mesa Arts Center’s commitment to access and inclusion. “It started with us realizing that there is a significant population in the community that we weren’t making intentional strides to serve. But for those who participate, the program offers more than skill-building, it fosters a sense of community that only the arts can build. “We have a lot of students that have been with us since 2018,” Wilde noted. “They keep coming back, and they sign up for classes now that they know who we are and know the facility. It definitely does feel like its own little community.”