2025 Black and Brown Solidarity Art Convening | Planning

We are so excited to announce our second annual Black and Brown Solidarity Art Convening with the help of Healing Illinois. This event is completely planned and executed by local youth.

So far, we are finishing the planning phase and getting into the execution phase. The youth committee started by participating in healing circles. These were co-led by Liz and Benjamin who are both trained as circle facilitators. This was to introduce the youth to restorative justice but also to build trust with one another, especially because they will be holding each other accountable during this process. After, the youth picked a topic for what this convening would be focused on. This year, it’s Creative Experiences within Proviso!

The Convening will be held on June 5th, 2025 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM. The youth are looking for creatives to submit their art to be featured at the convening. Please see the link below to submit your piece on your own cultural experiences or cultural experiences within Proviso.

Art Therapy

This week, we hosted Art Therapy for our community! This session, we painted sunflowers, to resemble that we can still grow within hardships. Sunflowers take up lots of sunlight but they are still able to survive off little water. Additionally, they produce many seeds when they are fully grown. Dana thought that this was a good symbolization that although sometimes there is no water in our cup, we still have the opportunity to grow and present seeds for out future. As the session went forward, the community talked about their experiences living in Maywood, and what they did to be a good neighbor!

Thank you to those who joined us! Thanks again to Dana for leading another session!

Art Therapy With Dana Harris

Photo Credit: Saffron

In mentorship on Saturday, the mentees relaxed with a bit of painting. Dana Harris, who has been painting for years, taught them that art can be therapeutic. She explained how art and painting can help with anxiety and calm nerves. She then guided them through painting beautiful cherry blossom trees. Dana also has a business of her own, Paint On Purpose, where she teaches art to people of all ages! Everyone had a blast creating and relaxing.

After their art session, our mentees moved on to website building with Lu’Cretia. In a previous workshop, they learned about website design and the different aspects of it. This time, they put that knowledge into action. Our mentees are at the beginning process of creating their own brands, so learning these steps of building a website are very important.

Photo Credit: Saffron

Art Meets Website Design

On Monday we welcomed Heather from Art Cures All to lead a workshop on collage art. Our mentees got to design their collage from magazines, as well as take a sneak peek of Heather’s artwork. Each table was set up with a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, glue sticks, and finishing glue. It was exciting to see each person flip through pages and pages of magazines to find their favorite designs and photos to add to their collages.

Afterwards, Lu'Cretia, our Creative Project Manager, took over to lead a workshop on website design using Squarespace. We love that we can provide our mentees with this skill set as it will benefit them in the future. Lu'Cretia went over the basics of designing a website, what goes into designing one, and showed some amazing examples from some of our past mentees…Amanda Leon Calligraphy and Makeup By Mariah. Although designing a website is a process, we cannot wait to see what are mentees create!

Photo Credit: Mariah

Handlettering Workshop

For the second half of mentorship on Saturday, mentee alumni Amanda Leon, came to TFD to teach our mentees about handlettering. Amanda is self taught in the skill of calligraphy and has turned it into a career since her mentorship in the spring. Handlettering can be done on a variety of objects such as: name tags, mirrors, chalk boards, home decor, pumpkins, and so many other things! In this workshop, the mentees first learned the main rules of handlettering; upstrokes are thin, while downstrokes are thick. Once they did some practicing on paper, the mentees moved on to some wooden pumpkins Amanda brought and came up with their own designs! They turned out great and everyone had fun learning from a past mentee!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose