As Highland Park’s librarian, I see students battle with circumstances outside of their control on a daily basis and the effects of these battles on their well-being is tangible. Many of our students struggle with anxiety, depression, disillusionment, and so much more – with a minimal number of coping skills to help them process their strife in a positive and productive manner. 

With the space and passion Highland Park has available, we would love to offer our students a “Maker Space” that is dedicated to the exploration of their creativity through art. This “Art Space” would be filled with materials and the offerings of diverse methods that inspire young minds. Our goal of open-ended creation, in an inclusive and variety-laden space will offer each student a learning experience that teaches them to be a risk-taker, thinker, inquirer, and a good communicator. Also, this is an opportunity to address years of underinvestment for students that don’t get the opportunity to take classes in the arts due to their enrollment in intervention-based curriculum.

As the pandemic recedes students need access to the arts to heal from months of isolation, and to readjust to life as it is conducted face to face. While students found themselves, and their peers, reduced to tiny icons on computer screens when distance learning replace in-class instruction, feelings of sadness, depression, and anxiety became commonplace. Fortunate, or plainly fortuitous, students discovered the arts lighten the emotional difficulties encountered, and they recognized creating as a crucial form of healing and connecting. It’s a sad truth that the bulk of minority and underserved children either hold little knowledge relating to various forms of creativity or lack the opportunity to access the dynamic materials that inspire them. Art is essential to adolescent development by engaging with the brain’s hippocampus, which builds emotional awareness and fosters empathy. This will especially help our youth coming from years of collective isolation and the associated traumas.

I am asking for a $1200 to enable Highland Park to create a 250 sq ft art center adjacent to the library with unique materials, and keep it supplied for multiple years. This would include looming products, various clays, sculpting tools, pens, markers, paints, paper, beads, sewing materials, light tables and other media the students may wish for.

*Highland Park Middle School hovers around 667 students with our library seeing from 100-250 students daily, of which we are intensely proud.