Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding for Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank of Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by the Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information is available at bemidjiairport.org.

[Music] [Music] I'm Producer/Director Kelsey Jacobson.

The Tin Ceiling Art Gallery and The Depot provide individuals with disabilities a way to create art and have employment opportunities.

In this episode we travel down to Park Rapids where clients are creating this art.

Charlie come up here.

[Applause] [Music] Looks like a [Music] blowfish.

How are you?

Good, really excited!

We're Hubbard County DAC.

It's a Developmental Achievement Center.

We work with individuals with mental illness or developmental disabilities.

Together we are all under the DAC umbrella and so we have multiple stores.

The Depot is one store and The Tin Ceiling is the gallery space and also retail establishments and then we also have Barely Used Thrift Store.

All of those are underneath the DAC.

Out here at The Depot we do a lot of building.

We do our woodworking.

Currently, working on building skills with our clients that we serve from using a drill to a table saw or any other large piece of woodworking equipment.

We also have a welding program and an art program here.

The art program here that we run, we again use recycled materials to create different sculptures, different art pieces, all of those are featured over here and over at The Tin Ceiling Gallery.

I believe The Depot has been around for 12 years.

I've been here for four of them.

This is kind of a passion project of mine.

This has always been my happy place and so I love it here.

I love everything we do here.

I like working with the clients.

It's very fulfilling.

So here at The Depot what we do is we run the thrift store.The clients that we serve here, the individuals that we work with they run the store.

This is their store.

We just are here to support them.

We take in donations, process donations and sell them and then the other thing that we do is we create things.

So we build ski chairs.

We build wheelchair accessible picnic tables.

We build all kinds of different things.

We have forks that we've welded together with golf clubs to make marshmallow pokers, birdhouses.

We do all kinds of different creative building projects here in the winter time.

Purchasing items at The Depot, at Barely Used and The Tin Ceiling Gallery - that is a great way to support artists.

We also take donations.

So, if you have building materials or craft materials, anything that you would want to get rid of that is in good condition and resellable we will take it and we will sell it and the profits from that go back into our programming cost.

I've been in Park Rapids for 10 years.

I've been working for the DAC for four of them, but I've been coming here for 10 years.

It's so bright and colorful and full of life here.

It really encourages artists to be creative.

They have multiple avenues to go down between the woodworking and the painting.

We have some very specialized staff that work one-on-one with clients to help just facilitate those art adventures that they go on here at The Depot.

They work hand in hand together with our instructors to create beautiful things.

Hi, I'm Charles Arvig.

I'm a DAC instructor here at the Hubbard County DAC.

I work with clients pretty much every day of the week.

We do a lot of wood projects here and a lot of all kinds of different projects.

I just kind of guide and help the clients with their projects and they help me with projects that I'm planning to work on or you know bigger projects that I'm planning.

I do woodworking and welding and whatever comes along.

I don't really have a specialty but I grew up on a farm and kind of learned to do a little bit of everything.

So, I don't really have a specialty but here I'd say it's mostly woodworking and welding.

So, what you can expect out here at The Depot, we have vintage items.

We also have used furniture, building materials, scrap lumber things like that.

This is definitely a place for doers and DIYers.

People who want to do small home renovations or big large home renovations, they can find the materials they need to get these things done here at The Depot.

They can also experience all the different things that the clients are doing here with us and all the different murals and sculptures.

That one is a perfect size.

Definitely geared towards people who are creative and doers and DIYers for sure.

The Depot is a job site for individuals that we serve.

It's also an opportunity for people to come over from the Day Center for what we call "Exploration Time".

It's a time when they can come in and explore different avenues of things that they're interested in, from learning about tools to learning how to paint.

The Depot is a work site.

So, what we do is we have individuals with developmental disabilities that work here, this is their job.

This is their store that they run.

We're here to help facilitate that for them but basically that's what The Depot is for and what it does.

It creates an opportunity for all kinds of different individuals to have employment opportunities here in the community.

During welding today, we worked on building some Cattails and building a sculpture for the Sculpture Walk in Park Rapids and we're building like a little mud turtle sitting on a log with Cattails behind it and a couple dragon flies and some Redwing Blackbirds.

I've got a couple of the Cattails right here that we were, clients were welding and I was helping the clients with welding and sanding and I end up doing quite a bit of it too but just them getting to watch, they learn from watching too.

So, and then the woodworking part of the day I was building canoe paddles.

It's a place they can come and do thing they like doing.

We try as a group to help them do things that they enjoy and help them expand their horizons, show them different things.

None of the clients that we had here had ever dreamed of welding in their life, never crossed their mind and then we started a little welding program and we've got four or five of them that really enjoy it and they're some of them are pretty good at it, a couple of them could maybe even get a job welding with a little more practice.

Some of it is job training, where the clients learn to do stuff where they might that they might run into in a job such as welding or woodworking.

They may not be ever end up being a master carpenter or a cabinet maker but they'll know how to do some things, how to learn how to use a screwdriver if nothing else.

It's amazing how many people don't even know how to use a screwdriver.

There's a lot of fulfillment and joy that comes into having this as a job.

There's such a variety to this job from running the store to, you know, cleaning and stocking the shelves, to creating the products that we're selling.

We do all of that here.

My dream is to eventually make this space an art studio and it would be open to not only the clients that we serve here but also the community to come in and participate in art programming as well.

We really try to help the clients experience what interests them not everybody's interested in woodworking, some of them try a little woodworking and it's like "oh I don't really like sanding stuff".

Some of them love to sit down and sand for a while and I enjoy helping them find something that they like.

This one's a lot thinner so you don't need to go all the way down with that.

I've been here at The Depot for I think going on 5 years I've been here.

We didn't have a woodworking program before I came here.

Emily and I started that.

[Music] I just like building.

I like making stuff and and I like helping people.

Here it's my happy place.

There's nothing that gives you more joy than working with these individuals every day from the big smiles to feeling their accomplishments and pride and everything that they're doing.

Somebody uses the drill for the first time or builds a chair for the first time and they're excited and they say "I did it!

I did it!"

I don't know, it fills your cup every day.

We really appreciate the support at The Tin Ceiling, at Barely Used and here at The Depot, couldn't do this without the community and all their donations and everything that they do for us.

We really couldn't and I just want to thank our community for all their support and I hope that they continue to support us and continue to participate in all the fun things that we're doing out here, come out, come buy some things and donate your items and just be a part of it.

It's a lot of fun.

I'm Laura Johnson.

I'm the Executive Director of the Hubbard County DAC and my role is to oversee all of the operations, to look at the program from a strategic view and help our teams be successful.

So, I work with Emily on planning.

We'll talk about what the programming is going to be.

She comes up with the ideas with her team and then they implement them and then I try to make sure that they have what they need to be successful.

The Hubbard County DAC has been around for 50 years and our mission is to provide people with disabilities and mental health issues an opportunity to learn skills, to have an opportunity to work in the community if they want to or to work in our program and we also provide social and recreational activities as well.

So, The Depot has been a store that has been used as a reuse center for the past 13 or 14 years.

So, the community donates items, we turn around and sell them and then the revenue from the program helps support all of our programming.

In the last few years we've seen some changes and people aren't as interested in the big furniture.

So, we've been trying to shift our model and provide more learning and hands-on opportunities for the people that we serve.

So, we started a program a few years ago where we start out using simple tools and then they graduate based on their interest into woodworking, metal working, different art activities as well as continuing to work with the furniture and what this has done is created opportunities for people to really grow and learn some actual skills.

So, they're not just cleaning, they're not just lifting furniture but they're learning how to make the items that we're now selling in the store and it gives them the opportunity in the future that they could potentially go out and work say a welding job if they wanted to.

So, the goal is to help people build confidence to build their skills and then decide what is the next step for them.

We're working on a fish right now and we're going to cover it with driftwood.

Hi my name is Leah Yerks and I'm a client at Salvage Depot.

I learned about it through Chris Rotti, the original owner of The Depot long before Emily took over and that was back in, I want to say 2014 when I originally started working part-time and then eventually I moved to full time which used to be 9 to 2 and then COVID happened and then I wasn't able to work and then I did take a community job for a while but that didn't work out and then the lockdown happened and a couple injuries happened and so I wasn't able to get back to work until January of 2021.

So, that's when Emily had just taken over, started me back at part-time which is 9 to noon and then eventually at my six month meeting I decided to go full-time.

I just love that there's a routine and I love working with the people, the customers, the clients and supervisors.

That's probably my favorite part.

I love working with Charlie.

He's a bowl of surprises.

He always makes me laugh.

I love his woodworking classes.

He's a great instructor, very hands-on, teaches you everything he knows about it.

He'll walk you step by step.

It's really nice being around people who are similar to me.

You don't find that very much here in Park Rapids when you have a disability, it's kind of hard not to to feel like an outsider sometimes but here everyone's accepted.

We embrace each other.

We're like one big unique family here and the customers have embraced that and that's really nice, you know, so love the customers, ones that you see regularly on Tuesdays for their discount or on Thursdays and it's different every day.

There's nothing stays the same here except maybe the chores that stays the same.

I'm neurodivergent so I have executive dysfunctioning, autism, VCFS which is the main one.

We're kind of just practicing our abstract skills right now but I'm very mild in that so I'm considered very high functioning.

The Tin Ceiling is our art gallery.

So, the work that's happening here at The Depot and also at our studio is then sold either as a DAC item or individual artists can sell their work themselves.

We have I think 10 different client participants who are selling their art in the gallery and then we have about 15 community artists who are selling.

So, it's a great place to go and get something really beautiful from photography to painting to jewelry.

We have some beautiful jewelry makers.

Those items are also being sold on Etsy and eBay and then we'll be opening up our own website in the next couple months.

My goal is to continue growing our job opportunities.

So, the key is to listen to the people we serve, what are they interested in doing and how can we help them get the skills so that they can meet their personal goals.

The whole goal of our agency is to provide people with choices and so we want to continue to allow people to work in one of our stores, at our main DAC Center or out in the community with support if they need it.

See if I can figure out that can go there.

It's kind of like a giant puzzle with the fish and then you find pieces that stick with the fish.

Charlie made the fish I believe.

For the artist, we have seen an increase in confidence really an increase in skills and people realizing that they can do things they didn't know they could do and once you learn that you can do one thing it's much easier to try that next thing because change is hard.

People have been with our agency, some people have been here 40-50 years and we're finding that there's talents that they didn't know they had and the great thing is when people come into either The Depot or The Tin Ceiling they get a different view of the people that we serve and then we're also offering the opportunity for community artists who might not have had a place to put their art a place to exhibit and get recognition as well.

The clients don't get here until about 9:00.

I get here about 8:30 and I'll start planning for what we're working on that day, you know, whether it's cutting out a canoe paddle or getting welding stuff ready for our art project over at the welding shop.

I enjoy the clients.

I have a lot of fun with them.

I probably tease them a little too much.

Charlie started out with us at the recycling center.

This agency had run the the Hubbard County Recycling Center for over 30 years and in 2017 we handed that back to the county and Charlie decided to come over and we actually have Jeff as well that came from the recycling center to work at The Depot and the great thing about this programming is not only has it opened doors for the clients but it's made the job maybe a little bit more meaningful for the staff because they now can take their passion and their creativity and share it and teach other people and Charlie has just done a great job of teaching people how to use the tools safely and to give them confidence and the welding program is just been really great.

We have a few people that really weren't interested in doing other things and now with the welding program they're very committed to that program, so I think that that is really great and I think it makes it a job that Charlie wants to come in at every day.

My name is Cecilia Nelson and I an art instructor here at the DAC's Depot.

They're able to express themselves in any way they means and by that it's like whatever they think of, whatever that they can think of whether the client is verbal or non-verbal they have an opportunity to create something that's fresh from their brain.

They have an opportunity to make something based off of how they feel and it's pure, it's unique and every client has a different art style and I think that's incredible and I think what it means to be an artist is just having that opportunity to communicate through sculptures and art pieces and paintings for them.

My favorite thing is the amount of creativity that I can use and being in a place where I can talk to people and being able to just interact with people that I grew up around and types of people that kind of have the same mindset.

I got started as a young kid being unable to get the art supplies that I was able to so I ended up having to use a lot of my creativity and try to figure out different areas of my own, trying to get around certain like pieces that I wouldn't know how to and evolved into me becoming more of an artist and understanding more medias and being able to spread myself out more.

Love painting, painting is my passion, yes.

That's my main thing that I teach but I teach a little bit of everything as well.

I do have art pieces at The Tin Ceiling that I have inserted but a lot of the stuff that I do right now is through just here when I started working here, I've always been working here so it's like I spread out throughout sometimes I'll go over and do classes at the studio but for the most part I started out here, you know, going straight from schooling right into this last May and since then I've been here every single week, every weekday and I've loved it.

I struggled a lot in school and I talked to one of my teachers and my teacher was able to kind of help connect me with the DAC and so I was able to get into a work environment where I was able to make money that I needed at the time but also being in an environment where I could be comfortable and happy and have a space where I can socialize with people that are a lot like me.

I do know everybody by name here and it is one of those things where I am still learning because everybody is so different and so deep and has their own [Music] personality.

Charlie, he's one of my favorites here.

I don't have a favorite but he's one of like the main people that I started talking to here because he's so wise and he's so but he's so quiet.

He's so respectful.

He doesn't treat anybody any different and he's very artistic and he doesn't give himself enough credit for that but he's so creative and he has so many different talents going for him and it's just incredible to see what he can do and how he interacts with the clients around here.

I'm Pat Kimble, I work for the Hubbard County DAC, I do electronics.

I do over here, we do like art projects like these right here which are kind of cool.

I'm working on like our work projects here which are electronics, put them together or screw them down so that way that they won't fall off.

Pretty in art, people throw away in landfills.

This is something that we love to do here at the The Depot.

[Music] People, they're junky electronics.

We can do like an artwork like this which is kind of cool.

My favorite part is about The Depot is seeing people drop off furniture or sometime work on art projects and stuff mostly like welding projects, wood projects or something like that.

Ski chairs, paddles and stuff like that or sometimes birdhouses.

I've loved this place for a long time about nine years.

Most products I built would be my first time ski chair.

That's one of my proudest projects ever.

Charlie helped me kind of learn about the welding and wood projects.

He's kind of like a local person for me in a way kind of have some much welding, how to learn how to weld, keep tools safe and stuff.

The hands-on is really nice because I'm a visual person so it's like learning but you're doing it as you're learning.

So, it kind of tricks the brain a bit and it gives the brain something new to learn that you can apply to in everyday life and that's what I love about it is like I can then go say my grandpa hey I learn this from Charlie so I can work on wood projects with you if you ever need my help someday, you know, cuz my grandpa's almost in his 80's.

So, I mean he's going to need help eventually.

So, I apply what I learned here to my home life as well.

So, my role as the Executive Director, I've been with the agency for almost 8 years and my job of course is to make sure that we're financially feasible and that we continue to grow and change.

Currently, our industry is in a real stage of flux both from the state and federal level, lots of changes in rules and how we work and it used to be that people really just came to the DAC program and they worked in one of our facilities although we did activities outside of the building and we do have work outside of the building but the primary focus was being in our facilities.

It's now the primary focus is shifting to people being in the community.

So, we have to continue to evolve and find new ways to meet the needs of the people we serve while also meeting the needs of the regulatory agencies that we serve.

So, my job it really focuses on those things, making sure that we're here in another 50 years.

Thanks for watching Common Ground.

If you have an idea for a Lakeland PBS production in north central Minnesota email us at legacy@lptv.org or call 1-800-292-0922.

To watch Lakeland PBS productions online visit lptv.org or download the free PBS app.

Production funding for Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed capturing is made possible by the Bemidji Regional Airport serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

More information is available at bemidjiairport.org.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008.