Can you imagine all the kids’ joy? 10 different artists will teach a group of 10 kids throughout the course of 10 weeks!
Tomorrow (April 4) and each Saturday throughout May 30, Brooklyn non-profit arts organization WOA (Walk of Art) Kids will be holding a series of free art workshops for children ages 12-15 at Low Brow Artique on Central Avenue.
“Each workshop is unique, whereas the artists who teaches the workshop will choose a specific style or technique of visual art to teach the youth. Some of the workshops we have scheduled for our 10×10 series focus on linear perspective, stenciling, painting and more,”executive director Jelani Buckner explains. Children can expect artists such as Damien Mitchell and Nathaniel Mary Quinn to lead the workshops.
With art classes dwindling in local public schools due to education funding cuts, Jelani and his team. which include Raki Barlow (Dir. of Arts and Education), Richard Burroughs (Dir. of Marketing) and more, decided that something needed to be done to supplement the disappearing art outlets for children.
“We discovered an urgency for proper art instruction for underprivileged kids and schools in low-income neighborhoods,” Jelani says. “We noticed that a large percentage of schools, in particular throughout neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, had little to no art education programs. We decided to combine our interest in street art along with the need for proper art education to create a program in which youth could learn various techniques from a number of professional and notable street artists.”
“Programs like ours are imperative in community development and relations,” Jelani adds. “In most of the communities that we serve, there aren’t too many options for creatives and the options that do exist are well out of the price range for families looking to nurture a young aspiring artist. We also feel that with the resurgence of street art murals going up in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and Williamsburg it is necessary to educate the community on the importance and significance of the art as well as the artists. There have been several studies linking exposure to art to increased intelligence in children, which is ultimately what we achieve to accomplish by exposing children to various techniques of art. In addition, we hope that we can provide opportunities for children to become advocates of art, become literate in art, make social, cultural and historical connections to art and lastly recognize and celebrate the diversity of their communities.”
The series, “10×10”, will end with a youth art exhibition which will also be held at Low Brow Artique. To find out more information please visit their website or email rsvp [AT] woakids [dot] org.
