CACC Programs » Federal Work-Study Community Service » California College of the Arts
California College of the Arts
Federal Work-Study Arts Students Serve the Community and Gain New Skills
http://www.cca.edu/center
Contact: Minette Lee Mangaha,
Program Assistant, Students in Action,
Center for Art and Public Life,
California College of the Arts,
510-594-3754,
mmangahas@cca.edu
In 1998, the California College of the Arts created the Center for Art and Public Life to operate “at the intersection of art, education, and community.” The Center’s mission is to create community partnerships to serve the college and the diverse populations of Oakland and San Francisco. The interdisciplinary program includes a variety of academic, professional, extracurricular, and experimental approaches. Central to the Center’s mission is the Community Student Fellows (CSF) program.
Community Student Fellow
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Community Student Fellow are Federal Work-Study community service positions that offer real world, on-the-job experience for CCA second year undergraduates through graduate students. The Center has developed art/work placements in Bay Area communities to employ the arts in vitalizing public life. Federal community service work-study and grants from Center sponsors fund internship-like positions in schools, community, and art organizations.
To prepare for their assignments, CCA students are encouraged to enroll in CCA classes such as art education, diversity studies, and community arts, or to major in the new BFA program in community arts. (This new interdisciplinary program focuses on community-based arts practice and theory, with an emphasis on service learning, civic engagement, and diversity issues.)
Artists-in-residence and administrators of partner community organizations and cultural arts programs work with CSFs in a variety of public programs, such as Art Esteem, which places CSFs in middle and high schools after school programs throughout West Oakland, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Studio One Art Center.
One notable activity for Community Student Fellows is the Oakland Museum’s Day of the Dead celebration. Dia de los Muertos is the annual Meso-American celebration dedicated to ancestors and loved ones now gone. Working together with families and neighbors, the CSF’s help organize the activities that are central to the commemoration of departed ancestors: building altars, walking in candlelit processions, dancing, and expounding poetry, eating traditional dishes and listening to music.
Community Student Fellows also employ the artistic process as they serve in health centers. For example, CSFs are supervised by artists in residence and administrative staff at Children’s Hospital, Oakland, through its “Art for Life” program. The Community Student Fellows help present inclusive, interactive, and therapeutic art activities which provide educational, developmental, recreational, and psychosocial support for the hospital’s young patients.
In a related program, Community Service Fellows serve with the Creative Growth Art Center and the National Institute for Art and Disability to provide creative art programs for adults who are physically, mentally, and emotionally disabled. These therapeutic classes help promote creative expression, independence, and dignity for participants and help support them as they integrate or reintegrate into their communities.
CSF Teaching Artists
Through the Center’s Art Education Initiative, CSF Teaching Artists (CSF TAs) work alongside teachers of art and interdisciplinary subjects. The CSF TAs receive extra training and support from Center Staff and art educators, including instruction in managing classrooms, creating curriculum, and collaborating with teachers and administrators. Partnering schools include the Far West School, Creative Arts Charter School, Montera Middle School, and Peralta Elementary School.