COMMUNITY ARTS PROGRAMS
We facilitate creative spaces to process and explore connections to self, community, and ʻāina.
Creative Circles
Our arts workshops support spaces of collaboration creating an opportunity for peace building and bridging deeper collective understanding for the protection of our precious resources.
Since 2016, weʻve served thousands of individuals through our community arts initiatives focused on uplifting local people and places by centering Indigenous values, storytelling, and local issues. Our projects go beyond static displays, creating mobile, community-based art that directly engages people in the creative process. Collaborating with local artists, frontline workers, and youth, we bring art to underserved communities, fostering dialogue on local issues. Recent examples include the 9-foot traveling Story Art Quilt raising awareness about Red Hill contamination, youth banners advocating for land and water protections, and art created in response to the Maui fires.
Our public art offerings are designed to be accessible and inclusive, offering participants a way to express their identities and advocate for themselves, while creating impactful pieces that beautify and transform public spaces.
Highlights
In December 2021, we facilitated an expressive space for our community in response to the water contamination crisis at Red Hill and offered therapeutic tools, such as textile printing, poetry writing, and creative art making.
Participants increased capacity to balance emotional and mental well-being, support their stress response, and bring creative processes into their individual work and our collective work in responding to the crisis.
Participants included artists, community health workers, non-profit leaders, volunteers and aspiring youth activists. One participant shared that it "felt like a space of peace-building" as both military personnel and de-militarization activists worked alongside each other.
Highlights
In March 2022, we collaborated with Nā Pua Kū’e, Hawaii Peace & Justice, and Oʻahu Water Protectors on an arts-education workshop for youth in Kōkua Kalihi Valleyʻs KVIBE bike program on issues at Red Hill + supporting civic engagement and leadership of youth in protecting our ancestral waters across the pacific. Youth were excited to create a poster incorporating a pattern, a message, and a symbol to represent themselves and to display on their annual ahupuaʻa bike ride through Kalihi Valley.
Highlights
Through 2022 we collaborated in a series of women's wai circles with members of Women's Voices Women Speak, sharing stories of interconnection and dedication to the protection of our waters. We supported a nurturing space for many of these frontline workers through intentional art-making in preparation for a large Story Art Quilt to represent a shared visions of safety for our bodies, land, and waters.
These workshops have been planning spaces for our Summer programs in collaboration with the Shut Down Red Hill Coalition, Oʻahu
Water Protectors,Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice, to center intentional art-making and conversations around mitigating contamination due to militarization and occupation. Our next event in June will be an intergenerational space for these community workers and youth to engage in therapeutic arts to nurture and regenerate inspiration for this deep work together.
