Creative Connections is the brainchild of Parnika Celly, an intern with I-Rise getting her Masters in Social Work from Rutgers University. Creative Connections is designed to create virtual space for the I-Rise client community to engage in mutual mentorship, making and learning arts and crafts, and self expression through the arts.

The program just launched this month and is stilll finding its bearings. Community engagement (in my experience of 15 years of doing this work) is always the hardest part and she is in process of building up the program’s attendance and exploring how to make the invitation to clients. But Parnika is asking the right question: how can art be of service to our community? Is this program about learning new arts and crafts, teaching your own traditional art forms, or is it just about having a space to gather in this lonely time of pandemic, utilizing art as a tool for community building across difference?

As of now, the program is somewhat to the side of the overall work of the institution, but there is so much potential in this organization for artistic interventions. And the Creative Connections pilot program provides a apt space to take the pulse of art-based belonging within I-Rise and the organization at large.

Yes! Art, like church and religion, can be a place for community, for coming together, for communal reflection, a place for self-expression, for grappling with ourselves and with the difficult issues and complex ideas of humanity, a place for reckoning, for inspiration, a place for unanswerable questions, a way to enter a liminal state that connects us (spiritually) with the intangible and with that which is larger than ourselves. Often Americans view of art as fun or pretty, as decoration. Frequently when I arrive in a new community the first thought is to put me to work with the children. Art is for children, right? It’s fun and playful, messy and make believe. It deals in emotions and passion and vulnerability. What a shame that we relegate these experiences to children only. Once you are an adult you are no longer allowed to play? To pretend? To dream into new worlds we’ve never seen before and ask… what if?

Art is not just adornment, art and culture are a crucial part of the fabric of a healthy, functioning and forward moving society.

Moreover, art is a tool. It is a tool of advocacy, it is a tool of policy shift, it is a tool of education and awareness raising. It is a tool therapy and healing. When I enter a community, my goal isn’t to see how I can create a new space for/with art making. My ideal is that I find the nooks and crannies where art can support and amplify the work already underway. I want the community I partner with to see art as a part of the solution. I want them to begin to think of how art can leverage their work in ways that other interventions may not be able. I want us to envision how art can walk alongside current efforts in service of the larger, overarching mission for a more just, equitable and liberated society.