Community Partner: Art with a Heart Intern: Allison Schingel Site Supervisor: Christina Ralls
What is Art with a Heart? Art with a Heart’ s mission is to enhance the live of people in need through visual art.
My favorite experiences at Art with a Heart all came from teaching and working with the students in the summer job program. The first few days were somewhat daunting, but the teens and young adults I helped teach were engaging and interesting. I liked working with them. I ' m very interested in education, but much of my past work in the subject has been based in theory. In the past, I had never really been able to put to practice my teaching skills on the regular basis. AWAH needed me to do so, though, and I surprised myself with how much invested I got. I really cared about all of my students, and it gave me so much joy to just sit and talk with them and learn about their lives. It turned out to be very easy to dismiss any preconceived idea about their lives ‐ in most ways, I think, we related to one another as peers, and I saw them less as students and more as friends I happened to work with or teach.
It ' s been this kind of shift in my general attitude that has made me look at Baltimore in new ways. A major strength of CIIP is its emphasis on Baltimore ‐ all of the city ' s problems, changes, and charms. Interning at Art with a Heart has made me more aware of the nonprofit sector in Baltimore, as well as the importance of artistic expression in this city and by its residents, but interning through CIIP has made me look at the work I ' m doing through a much wider lens. I feel more aware of the role I play in Baltimore, and that makes me feel even more grateful to be around people at work who are tireless in their efforts to make people here a little bit stronger. Art with a Heart stresses how the visual arts can enhance people ' s lives. I ' m so used to treating art as a solitary activity, but it ' s the communal aspect of making visual arts projects at AWAH that really makes me feel like my life is being enhanced. I couldn ' t imagine doing anything else this summer. ‐ Allison
Tasks:
● Assisted in teachi job skills, and visu twenty teenagers AWAH ' s summer
● Managed conflict between job prog
● Tested new proje products to be so HeARTwares stor
● Promoted the ma Shop & Bop, thro calendars, and co representatives