PC Students Mentor Young Digital Photographers at CityArts
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Photography students at Providence College are putting images to action in an innovative new course and partnership with ¡CityArts! in South Providence.
The Community Lens, a new collaboration between PC's Photography Department and the college's Public and Community Service Studies Department, explores the role of arts in the community and how they may affect social change.
As part of this class, PC students work with local kids via ¡CityArts!, the well-known community arts organization based in South Providence that offers a remarkable variety of free after-school arts programs.
Collaboration between arts and community service
The Community Lens course sprang from the relationship of the two professors, Nick Longo and Eric Sung, who co-teach the course. Longo had previous connections to CityArts through his wife, Aleida Benitez, who works there, which led to conversations with the staff at CityArts. Both PC and CityArts were excited about the partnership because, according to Longo, "We knew that CityArts is one of the cutting edge-arts organizations in Providence working with youth and they saw some of the resources our students could bring to their young artists."
"Every Friday we partner up with students and use photography as a medium to capture and explore the idea of community," said Magali Garcia-Pletsch, one of 17 students in this semester's class, and a sophomore majoring in Global Studies. "We are all individually partnered up with one to three artists, so we have had the chance to get to know a few artists very well. Watching their faces light up with joy when they get their hands on the cameras is so great to see."
Moving from snapping pictures to making art
"As exciting as it is to see the artists want to take pictures, this has also been one of the biggest struggles for the class," said Garcia-Letsch. "Since it is a photography class for CityArts, we are working on portraying photography as art and not just snapping photos. However, as the weeks go by, with the help of the older artists (ages 10-14), this message is getting more clear."
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The class is also hosting a blog about their participation in the project, here.
At semester's end, the collaboration will host an exhibit showcasing the CityArtists' work. "CityArts and the artists deserve to have their stories told," Garcia-Pletsch said. "At their age, they understand the value of their art and the potential their art can have at impacting their communities. As a PC student studying art and social change, seeing how the artists themselves think is better than reading about the topics in any book. They are such an inspiration."
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