Grace Coudal (she/her)
It was the beginning of fall my sophomore year that I decided I wanted to transfer out of Umich. I was not enjoying Michigan, and I wanted to move to New York and go to school there to pursue my career in Art and Design. I didn't feel like I fit in at Michigan, and I didn't feel like there was a community that would support my passions of art and activism in Ann Arbor. At the same time as I started looking into transferring out of Michigan, I also applied to optiMize. As the year went on and I continued going to optiMize workshops, I started realizing that there was a chance I could put my passions into a project that I could pursue, even if I still didn't love the rest of Michigan. I eventually toured schools in New York, prepared to leave Michigan by Junior year but after my trip, I was still lost with if I wanted to take the risk of leaving or staying. When I got back to Ann Arbor, my optiMize partner and I both decided that if we continued with optiMize and we won the grant, it would be a sign for both of us to stay at Michigan.
We put everything we had into the pitch and the future of our activist art group, STAA COLLECTIVE. With adrenaline, we continued through the optiMize challenge, and the idea of transferring started getting further away. Eventually, we pitched after weeks of hard work, and we won the grant. I was in awe. This was the sign. optiMize was providing me with the opportunity for me to make Michigan exactly what I wanted it to be, to take control of my life with the resources I had. I am not lying when I say optiMize is the best thing that has happened to me while at Michigan. Without the community and dedication of the optiMize team and the opportunity to pursue a dream of mine and my partners, I would have never stayed here. optiMize gave me a reason to stay here, and a reason to love Michigan. I am forever grateful for what the Social Innovation Challenge has provided to my life and the community it has given to me.
We, in STAA COLLECTIVE, have primarily been working on or social presence online, in order to engage with people worldwide about the topics we are passionate about. Over the summer, we have gained a substantial following online, but truly the most rewarding part of it has been the openness of strangers to our collective. We have had countless messages sent to us from individuals opening up to us and being vulnerable about their experiences with intimacy, navigating their identity, and much more. We have had many people reach out, asking about the collective and possibility for collaboration. Although our impact has been through the digital world, we could not be more honored by all of the individuals that trust us enough to tell us about the intimate parts of their lives and experiences. That is our goal of STAA COLLECTIVE, to create artwork that is vulnerable and honest enough for others to open up and start larger conversations.
As an artist, I am passionate about creating meaningful work to create change in the world. I am passionate about art and design, as well as the topics of intimacy, sexuality, gender, and identity. The ability to combine all of my passions into one project, one brand, one collective, is a dream that I am currently curating. STAA COLLECTIVE'S goal is to challenge societal norms on intimacy, sexuality, identity, and individuality through individual and collaborative art projects. We are a partnership of young artists that use art as a way to initiate conversations around sexuality and identity through the universal language of art.
I remember when I first saw about optiMize when I was on a bus headed to the Art and Design school. I remember reading an optiMize poster that said something along the lines of 'Have an idea? Want to make a difference? Join optiMize’s Social Innovation Challenge. After talking with another friend about the poster, we decided to look up optiMize online and were immediately drawn in to how welcoming and giving the community seemed. I applied with an idea at the time, and as the workshops started, I started feeling like part of the community of people wanting to make a change in the world.