So I think it is safe to start by explaining what !CityArts! is. So basically it's an organization, which provides free art education to children in Providence. In other words, they focus on what I'm passionate about! which is teaching art to kids who live in high risk areas, I'm incredibly excited to be here to say the least! Oh and what's also really awesome is that Rhode Island School of Design aka RISD, which happens to be the number one art school in the country right now is only a short bike ride from my house! It is very convenient because some of the kids i'm interning with attend that school, which is where I'd like to go for my masters.
Anyway, I'm not much of a writer, so I will be showing lots of images! The beginning of my time here in Rhode Island was very exciting. I moved into this little apartment outside Providence, which is walking distance from !CityArts! (it's awesome).
The day after I got here I started training. I met all the other CityArts fellows. There's kids that just graduated from high school, college, and grad school so there's a great variety of individuals, we have kids from Brown, RISD, Union. All of us also focus on different disciplines like poetry, theater, painting (like myself) photography, and others. During our first week we learned about our AmeriCorps term, we had Elementary school teachers talk to us and give us tips. There were many workshops and training sessions we were part of. Above is a picture of our "brainstorming" for possible activities we could do with kids. We also got the chance to visit the recycling center, which is the BEST PLACE on earth. You can find the most random stuff from left over plastic shape pieces to 12 foot wooden boards, It's great!
After our first week of training we went to our sites! ours was FoxPoint , where we go to in the morning til noon and Wanskuck from noon til 4. These sites are both Boys and Girls Clubs, we have kids from 5 to 12 years of age. Above is a photo of a really sweet girl I worked with, we made collages and painted on them! We didn't do much our first week since we wanted to get to know the kids, but we played a lot of games to learn their names!
This is a photo of the bridge I ride my bike through every morning, it's really nice! I'm not going to lie, it's been a little tough to maintain energy since i'm not too athletic and my bike ride goes through a few up-hills, but it's a great work-out!
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