Community Art-Making: Where Kids (and their Parents) learn through the power of creativity
Teaching Artists Lorisse Es Arte (in citron sweater) and Becky Schuman (in denim jacket) facilitating our art-making table where participants created an ideal, car-free New York City.
Throughout this spring, Creative Art Works Teaching Artists have been engaging young people and their families and friends in robust and event-specific artmaking activities with a number of community partners. While these drop-in activities are fun and require no prior art-making experience, all projects are designed around rigorous lesson plans that align with the goals of the larger community event.
We returned to the Sunken Playground in Edgecombe Park for Hike the Heights. This multi-partner community event encourages people to take care of their physical, mental, and emotional health by hiking the archipelago of parks from Central Park North to The Cloisters, known as the Giraffe Path. Making art can be an invaluable aspect of mental and emotional health.
Our most recent community event was It's My Park Day at Montefiore Square in Hamilton Heights. This recently revitalized community space features a CAW youth-created mural, Monte de Flores, which was commissioned by NYC Parks as the culmination of a years-long plans to breathe life back into what had been a neglected public space.
For the second year in a row, CAW participated in Car-Free Earth Day, a communal art project with the NYC Department of Transportation, where we asked visitors to our table on Dyckman Street in Inwood to help us build an ideal car-free city with lots of walking opportunities and public transit. Becky Schuman was one the Teaching Artists at this year’s Car-Free Earth Day, and she told us what it was like to watch a community art project come together.
“At Car-FreeEarth Day at Dyckman Plaza, artists of all ages came by to help us “build a city” out of recycled materials. The creativity was astounding and the enthusiasm of the artists was infectious. As more visitors came by, they admired what had already been built before they decided what they could contribute to make the city even more full of life and opportunity. It was a special moment to watch community members interact with others’ art and build such a complex piece together. By the end of the day, they built schools, playgrounds, ice cream shops, bike shops, a swimming pool, busses and trains, and even a tower for the local supervillain! ”
We invite you to click through some of the photos from our community art-making events below!
Car-Free Day
Hike the Heights/Giraffe Path
It’s My Park Day
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Immigrant Initiative in partnership with the City Council and Council Member Carmen De La Rosa. Individual Creative Art Works community events are also made possible, in part, by the West Harlem Arts Alliance, Montefiore Park Neighborhood Association, NYC Department of Transportation, NYC Parks, and CLIMB.
