Art Buddies + Bullseye + Ecquador Students

Art Buddies was excited to work with Sydney Hemman and employees of Bullseye Media at Whittier International Elementary.

Bullseye employees volunteered as mentors to 3-5 grade students. Art Buddies worked with ELL teacher Denise Malmgren to provide unique, tailored programming for recent immigrant students from Ecquador. Programming was offered in English and Spanish and focused on each students culture, life and feelings. Together, mentors and little buddies each wrote poems and created flags representing everything important to them.

"Everything You Need to About Art Parade!” with Toussaint Morrison

Activist, Writer, Actor, Producer and Musician Toussaint Morrison has been working with Art Buddies as an Ambassador and Program Facilitator. In this video you can see what the final day of Character Creation programming looks like - lots of fun! This video is from our Spring 2023 program at Hall Stem Academy in North Minneapolis.

On the final day of each Character Creation program, little buddies and their mentors wear their costumes and walk through the school in a parade. Students from the entire school line the hallways to cheer Art Buddies on and see the creations that were made. It’s joyful, loud and fun!

More about Toussaint Morrison:
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Art Buddies in the "Northeaster" Newspaper

We are thrilled to be featured in Northeast Minneapolis’ newspaper, The Northeaster. Written and photographed by Karen Kraco.

Art Buddies create superheroes at Webster

by Karen Kraco
posted on May 18, 2023

On Mondays in the afterschool program at Webster school, superheroes abound. There’s Zoe Dragonbite, a rescuer of drag­on eggs (because dragons are in danger of becoming extinct). Mysterious Malaysia has supersight, to see what’s going on and help people be kind to each other and do the right thing. I’ve Got No Money’s super­power is to change all the price tags in the world to zero, “to pay for the stuff that peo­ple need to live.”

Each young superhero has a sidekick: an adult volunteer who hangs out with them every week, helping them decide on their mission, imagine the possibilities for their superhero outfit and translate their designs into a costume, complete with shoes and gloves and accessories.

Britany worked on her mermaid superhero costume with help from her Art Buddy Aine Rodriguez.

“Our mission is to make the art accessi­ble, to help children feel creative confidence and a connection to themselves and their community,” said Heidi Rich, the executive director of Art Buddies, a nonprofit that for almost 30 years has been connecting ele­mentary school students with mentors.

Their Creative Character program, Rich said, gives the students a chance to build a superhero that’s based on who they are and an issue they care deeply about. “They build that costume and write stories and create comics and sometimes songs and dances and spoken word, and really, really let us know who they are through their cre­ative expression.”

It also gives them a lot of one-on-one time with a caring, creative adult. Each buddy pair gets a booklet that the two work on together, exploring their favorite books, movies, holidays, and heroes. The “big bud­dy” helps the child flesh out their superhero character and come up with a name. By the time they start making the costume, they know each other well.

Costume-making was an improvisation­al art, a series of decisions dictated by the materials at hand — bins of fabric scraps, ribbons, shiny paper, strings of beads and feathers, plastic flowers, fake fur. The stu­dents headed to the bins and held up mate­rials to show their buddies across the room. Adults and students huddled over glue guns, cut cardboard to which they liberally applied fabric and brightly colored contact paper.

Webster Elementary student JaiDynn used a glue gun to attach beads to his superhero costume, under the supervision of his Art Buddy Danny Sigelman. Volunteer Kip Lou is on their left.

One Monday Keegan was excited to ac­cessorize his octopus costume with strings of pearls that he put in a cardboard oyster box he had made. Across the room, as Hanad cut cardboard for the hat for his an­ti-racism angel costume, he said to his bud­dy Grace Enebo, “I almost cut something more valuable than this — I almost cut you,” as she held the cardboard and gave him advice on how to approach cutting a zig-zag pattern.

No swords or other weapons were al­lowed, but the students fashioned staffs, scepters and wands. A full-length mirror in the classroom allowed the superheroes to check out the progress on their outfits. At the end of each afternoon, everyone gath­ered in a circle for a show and tell, sharing what they worked on that day.

Watching the mentors and students navigate the costume-building is one of Art Buddies Program Director Mari Marks Mondanelli’s favorite aspects of her job. At first neither the student nor the adult buddy might not know how to approach the task, Mondanelli said. “I tell a lot of the mentors, just let the kid lead the way because nei­ther of you are necessarily going to know how to do it. But’s that’s part of this, figuring out their creative process and realizing they can do it.”

Art Buddies currently has programs in six schools. Mentors range from high school students to retirees and are recruit­ed through social media and at outreach events, Marks said. Rich said they are working hard to get as many mentors as possible from the communities the schools serve. At Webster, more than half of the adult buddies are from St. Anthony East or nearby neighborhoods. Some, like Barret Lee and Danny Sigelman, are established Northeast artists. Some, like Kip Lou, a se­nior at Minnesota College of Art and Design with a major in comic arts and a minor in education, are college students. They found this a great opportunity to get some infor­mal teaching experience. “This is a chance to see eye-to-eye with kids, a chance to see what their world is like,” Lou said.

On the last day of the program, the superheroes paraded through the school as staff, parents, and fellow students cheered them on.

Mentor Diana Menard said she’s al­ways wanted to make art with children and jumped at the opportunity when the pro­gram came to Webster. Working with young ones goes all the way back to when she was in elementary school and would finish her reading early and get to create puppet shows for kindergarteners. About her bud­dy Clara, Menard said, “She has a wonder­fully wild imagination that I absolutely love. … I wonder who gets more out of it, us or them.” Stacy Malbon, Clara’s mom, who cheered on the superheroes as they parad­ed through the school on the final day of the program, said Clara “absolutely loves” Monday afternoons, eager to share what she and Diana worked on and talked about.

Although it’s Art Buddies’ first year at Webster School, the organization goes back to 1994, founded as Creatives for Causes in 1994 by Sue Crolick, one of the first woman art directors in the coun­try, who was at the ad agency Carmichael Lynch, Heidi Rich said. Their first project was at St. Joseph’s Home for Children.They first partnered with Whittier School 28 years ago, a program that continues today. Over the years, Art Buddies programs have reached over a dozen different schools and summer programs in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Rich said.

The program is funded by grants from Carmichael Lynch, which also provides Art Buddies with office space, computers and printing. Other funding comes from the creative agency KNOCK and donations and grants, Rich said. Marks said the ma­terials for costumes comes from all sorts of sources. Some is donated, some she finds on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Interior designers provide fabric samples; a costume designer provides “buckets and buckets” of sparkly fabrics, Marks said.

Rose showed the group the progress she made on her gloves and belt after an afternoon of hard creative work.

Spring programming 2023

Photo by Scott Streble

Make Art and Create Joy with Art Buddies

Volunteer one afternoon hour a week for 6-8 weeks with a 3 - 5th grade MPS student to create a character based on their imagination and their world.

We are excited to get back to the kids and creativity! Join us as a mentor this Spring at one of our 6 locations! Be a buddy and help a student create their super buddy character!

Minneapolis

North, Northeast, Powderhorn, and Uptown

Mondays March 6 - May 8
Tuesdays March 7 - May 9
Wednesdays April 12 - May 10
Thursdays March 9 - May 11

Apply at artbuddies.org/be-a-mentor