The Flint and Steel Coalition

Flint & Steel is a not-for-profit, community-led organization aiming to advance educational, recreational, and artistic opportunities for people of all ages in the Mineola Texas area, but especially for our youth and young adults.

True Story. A student sat down in his homemade studio to record a song. It would be his last. His suicide note would be a song. His plan was to write, record and produce the song and then take is life leaving the song behind for his loved ones. The song took all night to produce as he put his feeling to pen and mic. As the sun was rising, the song was complete, but a new ending had been written. The act of expressing himself in song had a therapeutic impact. The song was finished, but he decided to live on to write many more songs. These are the stories of Flint & Steel and how we have seen real life examples expression through art lifts the spirt and perspective of those creating it. Flint & Steel was started after a college student returned home during Covid and saw what had happened to many of his classmates. Some were dead, others were in prison, some were heavily into drugs. He realized that these students had fallen through the cracks during high school because they were not involved in traditional school activities and there was nothing for them to do in outside of school but get involved with negative behaviors. He saw firsthand while he was in high school that these same students were dealing with a variety of mental health issues. He believed that creating recreational and creative outlets for these types of students was the missing link to seeing them through their difficult times. This college student used his time away from school during Covid to organize adult members of the community to create Flint & Steel and begin creating creative and recreational outlets. A skatepark was developed first and then the focus moved to creating ART House. The challenge is that we are a rural community with high poverty and limited resources. We have been able to generate considerable support from our local community to get this far. The City of Mineola has provided us a building. We have a small grant from the Rural Communities Foundation for recording equipment. We also have secured significant in-kind contributions from volunteers and local skilled labor. But we still need roughly $75,000 in cash or in-kind contributions to fully renovate and equip the facility. We have made do until now with a backyard recording studio in a shed and periodic creative arts project such as painting a community mural. We have seen enough to know what we are doing actually works. It is now time to create a place where we can open the opportunities to help more students. These students need a vision of a positive future. Come help be the spark that feeds the flame in our community!