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art camp: connecting migrant children with creativity Written on August 5, 2010, by mripp.

The Hardy Gallery’s Art Camp program just ended last week, and even though we have many Hardy Gallery supporters, many of them aren’t aware of this program and what it offers the children of Door County’s migrant farm workers. I wrote the following article as part of the Peninsula Pulse’s Culture Club series (in which each organization involved in the Peninsula Arts & Humanities Alliance — PAHA for short — takes an issue of the Pulse to write about something unique to their organization). I hope the article provides a bit more insight about Art Camp!

Art Camp: Connecting Migrant Children with Creativity
Peninsula Pulse, Volume 19, Issue 16
July 30,2010

It is estimated that between one and three million migrant farm workers will leave their homes each year to plant, cultivate, harvest, and pack fruits, vegetables, and nuts throughout the United States. This transience is invisible to most people, but the presence of migrant farm workers in many rural communities throughout the nation is still a constant, even in the age where machines often replace human hands.

I can’t imagine that it’s easy for anyone to pick up and leave their home for a few weeks without a fair amount of effort, but for these workers, it is a very typical way of life. For the children of these workers, this traveling lifestyle often begins at birth and often leads to a disruption in their educations and a disconnection from the community they inhabit for the majority of the year.

Even though many of us know about Door County’s agricultural bounty, it might surprise some readers to learn that there is still a large group of migrant workers that arrive in early July to help harvest the large cherry crop. Because many of these migrant workers have young families, the Gibraltar School District has hosted a Migrant Education Program since the 1960s, when thousands of migrant workers were needed to harvest Door County’s cherry crop by hand. Since then, cherry picking machines have replaced most of the workers — but the Door Peninsula still sees its share of migrant workers, and Gibraltar’s program is still going strong. The program takes place over three weeks, and it ensures that migrant children benefit from the same free public education provided to other children in their age group.

The Hardy Gallery’s involvement with the Migrant Education Program dates back to the early 2000s. One of the components of the Hardy’s mission has always been to enhance the creative enrichment of local youth, and the organization saw the opportunity to collaborate with Gibraltar on a series of arts-focused activities that would blend into their existing program and allow the students to explore their own personal creativity. The migrant children that are served in the program have fewer opportunities to engage in the arts than many of their peers, and the art lessons they do have (if any, because for many this is their first introduction to formal art classes) often lack one-on-one instruction. We developed a loose curriculum for the students and assembled several local artists and volunteers to help us execute the curriculum — and Art Camp was born!

Planning for Art Camp (and the Gibraltar Migrant Program in general) can be challenging — the program hinges on when the cherry crop is ready to pick, and unfortunately, there’s no magic date to schedule around! To give you a bit of insight, this year’s Art Camp instructors, Door County artist Donna Brown (who has selflessly given up many a July to teach the Art Camp program) and our Hardy intern Beth Servais, solidified this year’s Camp on a week’s notice upon learning that the students would be starting school on July 11 — a good two weeks ahead of schedule (last year’s program began at the very end of July)!

As I write this, Art Camp is at the beginning of its second week. In the days to come, the students will learn about positive shapes, the contrast of light and dark, and other concepts. They will create collages, mobiles, will draw as teams, experiment with sculpture, and will even learn about the performing arts. At the end of the third and final week, the Hardy will host a presentation for the students at our gallery on Ephraim’s Anderson Dock. The event is open to the entire community, and highlights the projects that the students worked on throughout the duration of Art Camp. I attended this presentation last year, and what sticks with me the most is the obvious pride these students have in their work and their involvement with the program. The group of students involved in the ending presentation is a far cry from the shy, unsure kids that gingerly sat down at the Art Camp table on that first day. I like to think that programs like Art Camp help these children hold tight to that newfound sense of creativity and excitement about the arts — an excitement that will hopefully stick with them when they travel home, and throughout the rest of their lives.

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