A roomful of art by children, in the Smith Union, is the result of collaboration between two Bowdoin students who had funded internships from the McKeen Center to work for local arts-based nonprofits this summer.
Jessica Bae ’22 said she interned with the ArtVan to gain firsthand experience with a nonprofit organization. But she soon made a deeper connection with the organization's mission. "ArtVan is dedicated to providing a safe, collaborative, and fun environment for kids to express themselves in, and I am passionate about working and creating connections with youth while helping them to realize their potentials, so ArtVan immediately felt like the perfect fit for me," she said.
ArtVan began in 2004 in Bath, Maine, as a mobile arts program that could provide under-resourced Bath neighborhoods with a therapeutic arts program for kids. Since then, it has expanded to other Maine communities, and serves more than 1,000 children a year. Bowdoin students frequently intern with the nonprofit.
Jules Kiley ’20 spent her summer with The Telling Room, and found, "as an English and Education coordinate major, its mission of empowering youth through writing represents the perfect intersection of my interests."
The Telling Room seeks to build confidence and strengthen the literacy skills of young people, ages six to eighteen, through writing and sharing their voices. It works with children throughout Maine.
McKeen Fellows are encouraged to come up with overlap between the organizations they work for, and for Kiley and Bae, the relationship between the ArtVan and The Telling Room seemed natural. The two students teamed up to create a gallery exhibition in which art inspires words that inspires more art.
"I initially thought that a collaboration with The Telling Room would be a natural fit for me, as both organizations provide youth with safe spaces for creative expression through the arts," Bae said. "Jules thought it would be really amazing for the Telling Room kids to write based on art they saw at, for example, the Portland Museum of Art."
Kiley then passed those stories to Bae, and the kids served by ArtVan created art based on their interpretations of the stories. "The gallery is a result of the natural flow between the kids’ art and stories," Bae said.
The installation will be up through October.
