Students in two CAW Programs at the High School of Law and Public Service in upper Manhattan made art that addressed social justice issues that have a profound impact on their daily lives. Students in an integrated in-school program combined neighborhood maps and statistics to address issues of student homelessness, redlining, and the school-to-prison pipeline; while students in an after-school youth employment program created a short documentary film about the immigrant experience. The first program found beauty by using the visual representation of stunning data to craft powerful calls to action. The second program created a deeply moving and honest portrait of a first generation immigrant in the NYC public school system.
For a group of remote-learners at PS/MS 278, virtual tours of NYC alleviated some of the monotony of being stuck at home during the pandemic and provided a sense of community and camaraderie. Mapping the Hidden Citywas a program that integrated the exploration a variety of art techniques with the exploration of NYC neighborhoods familiar and unfamiliar through online resources such as Google Maps and Google Images. In this issue of our blog, CAW Teaching Artist Brandi Yu plays tour guide and lets us tag along on some of the “field trips” that inspired her students.
A Creative Art Works CASA filmmaking program challenged students at MS 254 in The Bronx to write, direct and edit a dramatic short. Working around the challenges of Zoom meetings, four students bonded as a team and produced a cohesive and affecting story about cyber-bullying, witchcraft, voodoo, and forgiveness.
Young people in a CAW creative workforce development program learned graphic design techniques such as composition, use of color, visual literacy, and storytelling through words and images. Learning these skills offered these interns a chance to practice transferable career skills such as presentation and interviewing techniques, critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration. The program also amplified youth voices by asking participants to design effective posters on a social justice issue of their choice.
Want some inspiration? For the first time ever, all three of our Honorees for the Creative Art Works Annual Benefit for Kids are successful and inspiring women. Congratulations to Whitney Arcaro of RXR Realty; Karen Lupuloff, Supervising Judge for New York Family Court; and our Youth Honoree Natajha Graham, a former Youth Apprentice and programs Intern currently enrolled at Spelman College. Check out their brief video interviews and their award presentations from our Virtual Gala on April 22nd.
Students in Creative Art Works’ Digital Design class at PS/MS 278 took a deep dive into manipulating images and text. Students worked in Pixlr, a free software similar to Adobe Photoshop. Each project focused on a specific aspect of digital design, including collage, masking, and manipulating type. The results were beautiful, surreal, funny, and often thought-provoking. Presented within is a selection of artwork along with some recorded statements by the artists themselves.
A good video game or animated movie can blur the line between fantasy and reality. At the heart of many of these immersive entertainment experiences are unique characters that make us laugh, cry, cheer, and dream. If you’ve ever looked at the credits of your favorite animated feature, you already know that every character is the product of hundreds of hours of work by an army of talented artists. Recently, Creative Art Works joined forces with FunPlus, an international interactive entertainment company, to draw out some of the secrets of this fascinating process.
Maria Castro is in the seventh grade at Hamilton Grange Middle School and a participant in Creative Art Works in-school digital art program, where she has been creating posters that promote social justice issues that matter to her. Maria says her opinions have been shaped by her family and her teachers, but she has also been influenced by the social upheaval happening around the world in recent years.
Creative Art Work’s Remote Digital Public Art Youth Employment Program was the first remote job for all of our Youth Apprentices, and what a job it was! In addition to learning serious skills for the digital workplace, they grappled with challenging topics and crafted compelling messages about social justice issues, including racial and gender equality, animal rights, domestic abuse, child labor, climate change, family separation, mental hygiene and drug addiction, and the rising cost of health care. The quantity and quality of the work produced is staggering.
This summer, Creative Art Works is offering a Remote Digital Public Art Youth Employment Program that employs more than 40 teens and young adults from all over New York City. This digital art and photography apprenticeship is designed to build real-life employment skills for the digital age. It also gives Youth Apprentices (YA’s) a voice in the conversation about some of the social justice issues that have gained momentum in the past year. The work is intense, with daily deadlines and regular feedback from fellow YA’s, CAW teaching staff, and guest commentators from major branding, graphics and media companies.
Listen to Interviews with Our 2020 Benefit Honorees
Jerome Montrone and Teddy Swenson share a few brief words on their connection to our work.We are also pleased to introduce this year's youth honorees — drum roll, please! — Kashmonae LaShure and Devalis Carver!
To our students and youth apprentices especially: You are the center of all that we do, and we stand in solidarity with you in stating unequivocally that Black lives matter.
We also want you to know what solidarity looks like to us. It means that we will continue:
to see you -- your innate worth, your resiliency, and your dignity,
to generate opportunities for you to develop your creativity and self-determination, which we see as a fundamental human right, and
How do organizations provide a Public Art Youth Employment program during a quarantine? Creative Art Works and Catholic Charities Alianza collaborated to develop a remote graphic design internship that created after-school jobs to over 40 students from Liberty High School. Internslearned the principles of effective design and how to use photo editing software. For a final project, each intern created posters that answer the question, "What do we want to hold on to from our lives before the pandemic?"
At Creative Art Works, we are proud that all management and administrative staff have direct personal and professional experience in the arts, education and/or youth development in addition to nonprofit management. Most of us remain active as performers or artists in our spare time. Our new Intern is no exception. Read our engaging conversation with Melisa in our latest blog.
“During ‘turn and talk,’ it’s natural for students to share about their cultures. Sometimes it’s just a little thing, like the word for a color in their language. Other times, they might talk about the ways customs and traditions are different in their country, or maybe not too different. They learn a lot from each other.”
“I like the way I’m growing as a person. I never used to listen to anybody. I never wanted to do what I was supposed to do, but now I understand as you get older, a whole lot of things change. You’ve got to move different.”
“One thing I learned painting this mural was patience. I had a lot of arguments with my teammates over the summer, but I had to learn to get over it. We used a lot of tools this summer, but two big ones were compassion and teamwork.”
"Most of us took this job in order to make money, but something else came out of it – we also helped our families, we contributed to the Bronx Renaissance. I learned that when a community comes together and we work hard, we can get something done, and the whole community will be improved by it, they will enjoy it, and they will respect it."
