Creative Art Work's' newest mural, Momentum, was commissioned by Dock 72 and a partnership between Boston Properties and Rudin Management. It celebrates the past and anticipates the future of Dock 72 and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At 10 feet high and 150 feet long, the grand scale of the mural will be visible from the Manhattan Bridge and across the East River when it is installed along a ferry slip this fall.
West Harlem has witnessed tremendous historical and cultural changes over the past decades, and senior residents of Randolph Houses on West 114th Street have stories to tell. Creative Art Works, in collaboration with West Harlem Group Assistance, assembled a team of fourteen Youth Apprentices, recruited from residents of Randolph Houses and students from Innovations Diploma Plus High School, to interview and photograph the elders of Randolph Houses and capture oral histories of this dynamic neighborhood.
When we first met the Youth Apprentices of the 2017 Multimedia Team, most of them were complete beginners. It was the ambitious task of these young documentarians to tell the stories of our Youth Apprentices on our five summer Public Art Youth Employment projects. In just six weeks, they had to find their ideas, master skills, and tell amazing stories. We are totally blown away by the short films they created.
Several of CAW's literacy-based programs this spring invited students to explore point of view, mood and identity as represented in classic works of art as a means of better understanding these same devices in writing.
Daniel's Bergman was hired as Creative Art Works' new Program Director to build on our legacy of creative youth development. Daniel has thirty years of experience as an arts educator and administrator in schools, nonprofits and museums. His career has been dedicated to the power of inquiry-based, hands-on arts education.
What follows below are excerpts from an hour-long conversation in which we talked about CAW's mission, the difference between teaching art and creative youth development, teaching art with integrity, and the up-side of failure.