Community Art Studio

Mission Statement

One week after 9/11 we started the Naropa Community Art Studio within the Art Therapy program. This component of the curriculum is designed to cultivate the socially engaged art therapist. Students learn how to design, create and finance a studio of their own once they graduate.

The guiding vision behind this long-term project has been to provide a safe place for various members of the Boulder community to gather and create art together. We have tried to attract people who are often marginalized and unlikely to have contact with the humanizing practice of engaging in creative, artistic behavior in community.

Naropa University art therapy faculty and students manage the studio, organizing and running the many ways in which this space can be used. Respect for cultural, ethnic, gender and spiritual diversity has been a founding principal of our work. Unity in diversity, the birthright to pursue creative expression, and the capacity of visual art to contain and communicate the full range of human experiences has been the essence and goal of our mission.

To our knowledge, this is the first graduate program in the United States to attempt such a project. Our studio experiment at Naropa University continues to inspire our professional interests and generate exciting research opportunities.

Benefits of the Project:

To serve the community, particularly adolescents, by offering a haven for those interested in attending. For example, according to the Criminal Justice Bureau, it is not unusual for youth oriented crimes to occur weekdays between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. when kids are out of school and before parents come home from work. We would like to offer young people a safe place to go to pursue creative solutions rather than become engaged in seductive, counterproductive behavior.

• Afterschool Program for Teens

• Studio Group for Adults with Various Forms of Mental Illness

• Collaborative project with the Speech, Hearing and Language Department of Colorado University at Boulder working with Adult Survivors of Head Injuries or Strokes

In addition to serving the Boulder public, Naropa graduate students will have an opportunity to define, manifest and engage in a new paradigm for community-based service learning and art therapy education.

Purpose:

• To educate Naropa University students, within a service learning format, in legitimate alternative paradigms for studying art therapy.
• To deepen one’s relationship with the creative process, manifesting the imagination through visual media, and sharing artistic efforts within community.
• To become socially engaged through the practice of serving community through the Arts.
• To take studio-based approaches to doing artwork out into the world as an offering of service.
• To develop the many skills needed to define and facilitate studio-based models as a form of viable future employment.
• To cultivate a viewpoint of service as a spiritual practice.