Boston, MA (2025)
Teen Bridge
Making art is about empowerment, healing, and community.
These aspects of creative youth development came to the fore in Teen Bridge, a program at the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts. In it, teens participate in a year-round, multi-year program combining visual arts and woodworking education and experience, with mentorship, career development, and employment.
Teens collaborate to develop their artistic, personal, and professional voices and skills. They work as art teaching assistants and connect with Boston artists and opportunities. Participants develop leadership skills by mentoring younger students, helping select artists in residence, and presenting their work at exhibitions.
“We’re actively encouraged to step outside of our comfort zone and do different things like papier mâché or artist residencies, where we have different types of mediums of art to work with.”
— Teen Bridge Student
In my role building the program, I taught a series of over 50 credit-bearing visual arts classes and led recruitment for the Teen Bridge cohort, two part-time educators, and an Artist in Residence.
The results included
a 3x increase in cohort size in one year
three exhibitions of student work
school break field trips that spanned arts college tours, local museums, and City Hall
a pro gratis partnership with Feet of Clay where students fired their ceramics in professional-grade kilns
Projects
Teen Bridge used a project-based learning model, and one of my main tasks involved building a coherent programming calendar to drive forward teens’ visual arts, woodworking, and career knowledge.
Artist in Residence Program
My Recipe, Our Potluck
The Eliot School’s 2025 Artist in Residence, Yuko Okabe, led a collaborative art making project called My Recipe, Our Potluck that explored teens’ personal and community food stories through a justice and gouache lens. Highlights included tours of Ming Fay’s giant produce sculptures at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, teaching teens at the Food Project about food-based painting techniques, and displaying completed multimedia art in a group show at the Piano Craft Gallery.
Design Vision Project
City of Boston - Planning Department
Teen Bridge students used cartoons to advocate for changes they wanted to see in Boston. City planners listened to teens’ ideas for their cities as teens learned how planners helped design cities with community input. During their final session at City Hall, students presented their comics to city staff. They shared their visions—ranging from a reimagined Nubian Station to personal reflections on growing up living on the same street corner in Jamaica Plain. The Design Vision Project showcased intersections between arts and civic engagement and illuminated creative careers in local government.
