Each year, Providence ¡CityArts! for Youth chooses an annual theme to guide their programming. In 2012, CityArts programs explored the theme of 'Collaboration' by working with a number of community partners in Providence and beyond. Making Art Together: CityArts Celebrates Collaboration highlights some of these projects and celebrates the opportunities these partnerships have given CityArts students to learn from and engage meaningfully with many unique organizations and talented individuals around the city of Providence, At the same time, the collaborations gave CityArts the chance to share the young artists' work with new and unexpected audiences.
The projects on display in the Gallery at City Hall include work from the following CityArts collaborations:
- Youth Voices Frame Providence - A collaboration between CityArts students and local Providence artists, Holly Ewald, Mary Beth Meehan, and Tina Cane. Over the course of two weeks, these talented artists worked with students to map out their special places in Providence through the use of photography and poetry. The poems, photos and an interactive map that highlighted the student's chosen places were on display in Kennedy Plaza during the Fall.
- The Identity Project - A collaboration between CityArts and Roger Williams Middle School. Throughout the past school year CityArts educator and AmeriCorps Expanded Day Teaching Artist Project member, Alessandra Zsiba helped her students at Roger Williams to explore their identities using poetry, performance and photography. The photographs displayed here are a small piece of the final product of this beautiful project.
- Monster's Playground - A collaboration between the young artists in CityArt's Painting and Drawing class, led by Lisa Melmed, and artists with developmental disabilities at Resources for Human Development, led by Anna Meyer. Artists at each location created images of heads, bodies and legs which were then placed together to create imaginative and playful monsters and creatures.
- The Providence Community Health Centers Mural - A collaboration between CityArts and Providence Community Health Centers (PCHC). During this past summer PCHC opened a beautiful, state-of-the-art new facility in South Providence, around the corner from CityArts. With great pride, CityArts has been chosen to fill the walls of this new health center with art created by the young artists in our program. The murals shown here will be the latest installation.
About the Gallery at City Hall: Offering space to artists and organizations that might not have a permanent gallery, the Gallery at City Hall exhibits an eclectic array of work that highlights the artistic and cultural diversity found in the Providence community. The Gallery is open to the public during City Hall business hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm; on the first and third Wednesday of every month, hours are extended until 7pm.