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October & November 2008 News
Chameleon is having a national impact on community arts and youth development programming. In July, Professor Hugh Merrill was invited to teach a printmaking workshop at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado. He lectured on Chameleon, the Block Print Studio and our past years community arts projects to this vaunted creative, and educational community.
Chameleon and Hugh Merrill were invited to facilitate community arts workshops at the University of Utah for their Arts and Art Education Department, October 2008. Merrill presented an interactive workshop on Chameleon’s youth development and community arts process, featuring the Portrait of Self curriculum, StoneLion Puppet Theater, and Faces of Homeless Youth poster project. The workshop was so well received that Professor Beth Krensky PH.D invited Chameleon to endorse her new book on community art that is in the process of publication.
Chameleon and Hugh Merrill also facilitated a printmaking and drawing workshop for Saltgrass Printmakers in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sandy and Erik Burnvard directors of the Saltgrass community print studio and faculty at the University of Utah organized the visit and printmaking and community arts workshops. Ten area artists participated and there was a wonderful exchange of artistic, technical and community arts information. The arts community was very interested in Chameleon’s Block Print Studio and our use of printmaking to work with at risk and homeless youth communities.
Staci Pratt, Director of the Office of Homeless Liaison, with whom Chameleon works closely to provide arts programming for homeless students in Kansas City Kansas public schools, and Hugh Merrill have been invited by the National Association of Educators of Homeless Children and Youth at their national conference in Washington DC in November of 2008. Pratt and Merrill will present the past two years of arts and youth development programming focusing on the Faces of the Homeless poster and arts installation program.
Hugh Merrill will be presenting Criterion for Community Arts to the FATE, Conference Foundation: Arts Theory and Education, in Portland Oregon in April of 2009. The presentation will focus on using community arts as a core issue for college and university foundation arts programs. For the past two years first year students form the Kansas City Arts Institute have worked and volunteered in Chameleon’s youth development and community arts programs.
Staci Pratt, Director of the Office of Homeless Liaison for the Kansas City Kansas Public School District, conducted a mini-conference for educational agencies in local school districts working with homeless youth populations, September 2008. Over 12 Homeless agencies form across the metropolitan area participated in the day-long conference hosted by Chameleon and the Office of Homeless Liaison KCKS.