Downtown aurora visual arts (dava)
This is a project for PSU capstone
This slideshow is from the Spring 2021 student exhibition titled: Re-Emergence. All photos taken by me.
My name is Rae, a senior at Portland State University, soon to be graduating from the school of Public Health with a focus on Community Health Promotion. This project you see here was apart of my work as a PSU Effective Change Agent Capstone, working with a local non-profit organization here in the Denver, Colorado area. In my personal life I am passionate about the arts as a channel for self-expression and creative exploration, believing in it's boundless potential for growth and healing. Through this capstone project, I've had the honor of working with DAVA, assisting in their free multi-media open studio program for school aged children. Primarily helping kids with bringing their ideas to life through ceramics work.
dava's mission statement:
"DAVA is dedicated to strengthening the community through the arts with a primary focus on youth engagement. We have 26 years of proven success in keeping kids learning and achieving in northern Aurora, Colorado, the most culturally diverse neighborhood in the Denver area. Our purpose is to provide challenging, relevant art programs with the greater goal of affecting positive change in the community through youth development and education."
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History
The founder of DAVA, Linda Graham, was simply an artist in the local community who saw a need for school aged children to engage in something meaningful during their summer break of 1993. With the first mural being a huge success, they did another one later that summer. Soon the kids kept coming back, wanting more. She then found a small space for rent in Downtown Aurora, Colorado, hauled in her ceramics equipment, and started teaching all about clay. Over the next two years, it grew in size, became a registered independent non-profit, and took off from there. They were able to gather funding, hire more teaching artists, rent out more space, and grow the program to include job training and work stipends to the older students. Now it’s still thriving 28 years later, providing completely free, multi-media arts programs to children 3-17.
My reflections
The experience I had working with Downtown Aurora Visual Arts center was definitely one to remember. It was full of moments of learning and unlearning. I was asked to step into a supportive role that included active facilitation, unconditional encouragement, and gentle redirection. It was a fruitful process of unlearning my own conditioned frameworks around art. In my youth I had art experiences where I was corrected, judged, and graded upon what I was creating.