During the 2017/2018 program year, a number of participants at our Riis Academy-InfoTech program were afforded the wonderful opportunity to participate in an intensive contemporary art immersion program at the famed museum Dia Chelsea. The program, which was made possible by a partnership between the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) and the museum, provided the youth with “a learning experience that offered them practice in skills related to self-expression, collaboration, and art making through experiential processes beyond the school setting, as well as the opportunity to engage with contemporary art and the processes of practicing artists”.
Over the course of ten weeks, five of our high school juniors, Kina Brailsford, Brandon Diaz, Jeremy Lopez, Kayla Flores and Tysuan Bland, worked alongside two Artist Educators from the museum, Steven Kwoq and Ashanti Chaplin, and followed a curriculum designed to expose the youth to the world of modern art and architecture. They visited art museums, met with architects and other professional artists, and traveled to the museum’s flagship site, Dia Beacon, in upstate New York. Throughout this immersive learning journey, the youth were encouraged to engage in collective dialogue, explore their personal interests, and cultivate their own artistic voice.
At the end of the ten-week period, the youth took what they learned to create their own art installation, which evoked themes of time and place. The culminating project showcase was held on June 27th and was attended by Riis Academy-InfoTech staff, students, their families, as well as Riis’s executive director, Chris Hanway, and representatives of Riis’s board of directors.
The students gained a lot from the experience. In addition to meeting with real life working artists, they spent ample time creating independent drawings and other art works. Kina Brailsford described her time in the program as an “enlightening experience”. She stated that felt she had “a lot of freedom to create and act as a true artist” and expressed that she “felt safe to express herself creatively”. Due to the enthusiasm of the Riis Academy youth and the overall success of this year’s program, DYCD and Dia Chelsea have decided to extend the length of the program from ten weeks to twenty weeks next year. And, all five of our stellar students have been invited to return next year!
