Current Projects
Global Women Heroes Project // New York City
As a response to the injustice that our communities face under the crippling effects of mass incarceration and gender inequality, ARTE has created the Global Women Heroes Project, which will serve as a message of creative and sustained resistance through community workshops, a wall mural to be completed in spring 2018, community discussions and organizing trainings.
The project is in collaboration with the Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry, Columbia University Justice-in-Education Initiative, and formerly incarcerated students at Rikers.
LGBTQ Art & Organizing // Bronx
In partnership with the New York Urban League and the Careers in Sports High School Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), ARTE is collaborating on a mural project in efforts to continue to educate the local community on lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, queer/questioning rights.
Accompanying the community mural project, ARTE and GSA leaders will brainstorm creative ways to take collective action to continue to help build a safe campus and greater South Bronx community.
Gender Equality at Rikers Island // New York City
In continued partnership with the Columbia University Justice-in-Education Initiative, ARTE has been engaging incarcerated adolescent men in a visual arts program, focusing on women's rights and gender equality. In the past, students learned about several contemporary artists, including Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Kehinde Wiley, and J.R. and created a collaborative art piece in honor of the important women in their lives, while also addressing sexual harassment of women in their own communities.
Photo from our workshop, "Decolonization of the Imagination:” Creating a New Paradigm through the Arts" at the 2017 Beyond the Bars Conference.
Past Projects
Middle School Racial Justice Arts Program // Harlem
In collaboration with the New York Urban League's STEAM summer camp, ARTE led a two-week arts program focusing on racial discrimination as a human rights violation. Students worked on personal pieces of art in response to the racial injustice within the United States, including the issues of mass incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline, and racial profiling. As their culminating art project, students collaborated on several large canvas pieces focusing on racial discrimination to share with the rest of their community.
Discrimination in Our Communities // New York City
For the third consecutive year, ARTE is partnering with the High School for the Arts, Imagination and Inquiry at the MLK Educational Campus in Manhattan to implement a human rights education and arts program. Students have chosen to focus on the different forms of discrimination in their community, including discrimination against gender, race, and sexual orientation. Students in the program will be creating a mural on their campus addressing these issues, while simultaneously honoring the legacy of acclaimed educator and social justice advocate, Maxine Greene.
Honoring Women Heroes at Rikers Island // New York City
In partnership with the Columbia University Justice-in-Education Initiative, ARTE has been engaging incarcerated adolescent women in a visual arts program, focusing on women's rights and portraiture. Over the course of the workshop, students were introduced to five global women heroes: Leena Kejriwal (India), Malala Yousafzai (Pakistan), Michelle Obama (United States), Bree Newsome (United States), and Leymah Gbowee (Liberia). As a culminating project, students created a mural design, that serves as the inspiration for an upcoming community mural project.
Queens Middle School Human Rights & Arts Program
This past year, in collaboration with the non-profit youth development organization Global Kids, ARTE has led an after-school arts program for middle schoolers in Queens. Each week, students have explored various important human rights issues, including: child slavery, mass incarceration, and gender equality. To learn more, please visit our blog here.
#IgualdadParaTodos // Queens, New York City
For the second consecutive year, ARTE partnered with the Pan American International High School in Elmhurst, Queens to deliver a quality, year-long human rights and arts-infused curriculum for recently immigrated students from across Latin America. The first semester class created a large-scale installation that highlighted specific cases and raised awareness of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system and of juvenile solitary confinement. The second semester class made a culminating mural project, #IgualdadParaTodos (Equality for All), which engaged members of the PAIHS community against discrimination in all forms. Students decided upon a wide-reaching message after having discussed the various ways they and people in their lives had experienced discrimination, focusing on race, language, immigration status, and ability, and how those might intersect.
Prison Is a Feminist Issue // East Harlem, New York City
For the second consecutive year, ARTE partnered with the High School for the Arts, Imagination and Inquiry at the MLK Educational Campus in Manhattan to implement a human rights education and arts program, focusing specifically on women’s rights, gender inequality, and patriarchy. Through a multimedia arts curriculum, students researched the topic, specifically focusing on the experiences of incarcerated women. In the process of educating themselves, several student leaders involved in the program designed and delivered a workshop on patriarchy to middle school students in West Harlem. As their culminating project, in partnership with the Visions of Confinement exhibition, students created a stunning movable mural that was displayed at the Hunter College East Harlem Gallery. Their message, “Prison is a Feminist Issue,” was envisioned using wheatpaste techniques and was accompanied by community workshops focusing on the subject matter.
Women’s Rights at Rikers Island // New York City
In partnership with the Columbia University Justice-in-Education Initiative, ARTE engaged incarcerated adolescent women in an eight-week program using visual arts. The program gave participants an opportunity to learn about the experiences faced by women while learning basic art techniques and creating meaningful pieces of art. During the program, students were introduced to several selected pieces of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). As a culminating project, students created pieces of art bringing awareness around human trafficking, by creatively redesigning candy bar wrappers to convey the message that, “Women are not for sale.”
#ImmigrationRightsMural // East Harlem, New York City
In spring 2015, ARTE completed a mural in collaboration with Art for Change and the High School for the Arts, Imagination, and Inquiry (HSAII) at the MLK Educational Campus, focusing on the experiences and rights of immigrants. ARTE Students worked over the course of several weeks, incorporating the following quote by U.S. President Barack Obama into their mural, "...What makes somebody an American is not just blood or birth, but allegiance to our founding principles and the faith in the idea that anyone from anywhere can write the next great chapter of our story."
PAL YouthLink Program // Brooklyn, New York City
ARTE completed a five-session after-school workshop series with PAL in East New York, Brooklyn, engaging with a group of students on a curriculum focusing on human rights, social justice, and the arts. During the workshop series, students educated and discussed a series of issues affecting their community (racial discrimination, police brutality, sexism) and worked together on a collaborative mural piece focusing on these human rights issues that was presented to the rest of their community at their final event.
2015 Collaboration with Pan American International High School // Queens, New York City
ARTE worked partnership with the Pan American International High School (Pan Am), located in Elmhurst, Queens. Working with a classroom instructor, ARTE provides weekly curriculum focusing on human rights and the arts to a diverse group of high school aged youth, many of which come from several different countries throughout Latin America. Since its inception, students have learned about women’s rights and children’s rights through the creation of masks, mosaics, mobile sculptures, and other art forms. For their final mural project, students choose to focus on the rights of immigrants.
The Right to Play: Child Slavery Mural // Boston
In spring 2014, at the Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA) in Hyde Park, Boston, after a rigorous and interactive human rights training and through the support and guidance of teachers, UNICEF representatives, and local mural artists, BCLA students designed and created a vibrant mural within their school focusing on child slavery, creating awareness on this pressing human rights issue. Now standing proudly in the hallways of BCLA, students and faculty will be reminded to take a stand against the unjust and inhumane labor conditions experienced by children and youth everywhere.
Immigrants' Rights are Human Rights: Art-Making at MIRA's Citizenship Workshops // Boston
In fall and spring of 2014, ARTE partnered with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), the largest organization in New England promoting the rights and integration of immigrants and refugees, to provide free arts workshops for children during MIRA’s citizenship workshops in Boston. While parents received valuable naturalization information and application assistance, ARTE provided free and engaging arts activities for their young children involved in the long and often tedious naturalization process. One activity included the creation of community trees, where participants explored what aspects of their neighborhood they liked best and which aspects they wanted to see changed.
Celebrating the Dream Interactive Installation // Boston
ARTE provided in-kind artistic support for students at the Boston International High School participating in Celebrating the Dream: The Young People’s Project fundraiser and celebration honoring Bob Moses, with special guest speaker Angela Y. Davis. As the culminating project to their unit on “Art and Social Action,” these students created two large interactive installations, asking the audience to share their dreams for a better world and the steps they would need to take in order to achieve them.
Hands Off! Human Trafficking Mural // Bronx, New York City
In spring 2011 in New York City, ARTE partnered with the Advocacy Lab, Project Futures, SMF, Subway Art History, and the South Bronx Community Association to produce a mural bringing awareness to the sex trafficking of women and young girls, demonstrating how art can be used as a tool for human rights change. The vibrant mural, located on a wall in a residential South Bronx neighborhood, called for an end to sex trafficking of women and attracted media coverage from several different outlets, including News 12 El Bronx, The Global Grind, and CNN International. Through this initiative, the students were empowered with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to make a difference for human rights in their local and global community.
Testimonials
We hosted ARTE at our organization to lead a workshop for our Teaching Artists and staff on addressing Human Rights with youth in the classroom. It was incredibly beneficial for our team and staff walked away feeling empowered and prepared to become human rights advocates in the classroom. The workshop was very well prepared, organized, deeply thought out and inspiring. I received so much positive feedback from staff on this workshop including frequent requests for more and longer trainings from ARTE! When surveying staff about their experience and this is what some of them had to say:
“This was an amazing training and was well worth the time. It was really inspiring and ARTE was amazing! I would definitely have them lead the training again!”
“I enjoyed the different activities we had to do with our co-workers and got to learn more about each other. There was so much valuable and awesome information. I wish we had more time!”
“The ARTE facilitator was very knowledgeable about the subject. The sketches were very good to get everyone involved and help us better learn how to use this material.”
“It was great to have everyone involved and participating. I learned a ton of information from the training to bring back to my students.”
“I thought the training was very relevant and thought provoking. I am excited to continue these conversations in my classroom.”
Shelly Horn, Coalition for Hispanic Family Services
As an urban high school that focuses on community leadership, I was thrilled to work with ARTE on a human rights art project with our students. ARTE educated our students about international human rights issues in a tangible and meaningful way. They empowered Boston students to design and paint a mural that calls attention to child labor and slavery, which hangs prominently in our school hall. ARTE made tangible the ways that art can positively contribute to the community, helped us advocate for a cause, and built community and confidence among students.
Amanda Chaloupka, BCLA Teacher
ARTE led a session that was both educational and empowering, where participants got to examine their hopes for the future and the tools and tactics they would use to achieve them, all depicted in a beautiful tree installation."
Charles Amuzie, New Organizing Institute
We had such an amazing afternoon with the ARTE team when they visited us at our middle school after school program in Brooklyn. From the ice breaker activity to executing the project for the day, ARTE did a great job at keeping the students engaged and asking questions, even on a Friday afternoon! I think it was such a valuable experience for the students to have a greater awareness of what human rights actually are and how they can have a voice, through art, in expressing the importance of these rights.
Mallory Sustick, City Growers B.E.E.S. After School Program
ARTE came to two of our legal workshops for immigrants pursuing their U.S. Citizenship. ARTE was invaluable at these events, not only by engaging the kids who came to the event with their parents, but facilitating the use of artwork to open new conversations with the kids and all those attending our event.
Julia Schuster, MIRA Coalition