Our Five Programs
Please visit the Projects Awaiting Funding page for more information on current projects
Young Minds Build BridgesThis program brings together groups of youth from diverse cultural backgrounds to work together for a common artistic goal. CITYarts collaborates with international artists and youth via the internet to facilitate global communication and understanding. Through this program, CITYarts strives to strengthen bonds among youth from all over the world and to instill in them a positive attitude towards each other. Based on their ideas they will paint murals in their neighborhoods.
Launch the Pieces for Peace Website
Pieces for Peace with Youth from Around the World:
The Pieces for Peace mosaic project is designed to build bridges of cultural understanding by bringing together American children and their peers from around the world. The long-term project began January 2004.
Visit our Pieces for Peace Website
PHASE I: The identification and selection of partner schools and participating students and teachers; the development of a Pieces for Peace website linking the participants; and the creation of web-based curricular and collaborative materials.
Date: Began January 2004 Ongoing
PHASE II: A web-based exchange of ideas and images about peace, leading to the conceptual development of the mosaic. Participants will express their hopes for a peaceful future through an online mosaic comprised of tile-size drawings, paintings, and poems.
Date: February 2005 – April 2006 Ongoing
PHASE III: Selected students from approximately 20 partner schools will participate in a New York residency, where they will work along side professional artists on the design and construction of the Pieces for Peace mosaic in Harlem .
Date: June – October 2005 Completed
PHASE IV: CITYarts has organized a traveling exhibition entitled: “Pieces for Peace Mosaic Project with Youth from around the World.” Starting at Flushing Town Hall, Queens, the exhibition includes 300 original artworks, photographs of the creative process, photos of the students in their schools, and a documentary video. Find out where the exhibit has traveled here.
Date: Began November/ December 2005 Ongoing
Global HeART Warming Global HeART Warming
Global HeART Warming is designed to engage youth in discussion about the current state of the environment and to create artworks that express both concerns and hopes for the future. It challenges youth to ask, "What can I do to reduce the speed of global warming?" It will include three phases - Workshops, Murals and Exhibitions.
Global HeART Warming Workshop with Fresh Air Fund (2009)
Youth from Fresh Air Fund visit the "Climate Change" exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. A workshop is then held where participants create artwork from recycled materials.
Global HeART Warming Partnership with the Health & Climate Foundation (2009)
As we continue our outreach to the youth around the world, we have created a second project entitled Global HeART Warming, celebrating nature and raising awareness of global warming. Our recent partnership with the Health & Climate Foundation headed by David Rogers will further and highlight this initiative which will encourage children and youth to ask, “What can I do to reduce the speed of global warming?” This phenomenon of course has implications on health caused by climate change. Continuing CITYarts’ successful method of addressing civic and social issues through art, children and youth in Geneva will be creating art in workshops, giving their thoughts and opinions in drawing, painting, and conversing at a conference titled World Climate Conference-3 (WCC3). We will exhibit their artworks and highlight their voices, perhaps with a mural on-site and conversations on the subject with professionals in the field and participants of the conference. Photos of artwork and discussion forums will follow soon. Meanwhile, for more information on the partnership or on donating to the initiative, please read the statement proposal of the partnership between CITYarts and the Health & Climate Foundation.
Find out more
Living Planters (2009)
Living Planters CITYarts is collaborating with Stonehenge Management LLC to revitalize the scenery in the courtyard if the Stonehenge Village apartment complex. This summer, CITYarts artists worked with the youth at the complex to create designs for 18 planters, and are now painting the designs.
View more pictures
Nature is Love on Earth (2008)
Nature is Love on Earth In Summer 2008, CITYarts has revitalized the scenery at the St. John’s Recreation Center, and at the same time provided youth with the opportunity to harness their creativity and renew their previously vandalized walls for a worthy, global cause. The mural is a collaboration between CITYarts and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the third of five murals across the five boroughs of New York City in CITYarts’ Global HeART Warming project. It aims to raise awareness of climate change while celebrating nature. Global HeART Warming calls upon youth from New York City and around the world to answer the question, “What can I do to reduce the speed of global warming?”
View more pictures
Community Identity This neighborhood revitalization program addresses social issues through site-specific works of art. Local artists, youth, their families and their community collaborate to create art for their neighborhood. Artworks completed under this program reflect the spirit of the participating communities and bring their diverse residents together. Our goal is to encourage participating youth and adults to appreciate their cultural heritage but also to celebrate an identity in their new homeland.
Rolling Bench Restoration at Grant's Tomb (2008)
Rolling Bench Restoration CITYarts' volunteers worked with original artist Pedro Silva and his son Tony Silva to restore the Rolling Benches of Grant's Tomb. Over three months in the summer of 2008, volunteers cleaned the bench, chipped away broken tiles, cut and replaced tiles, grout, and polished the benches.
View more pictures
The Helio–Chronometer (Reloj solar) Sculpture Project (2004)
Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project A permanent sculptural installation has been created on the exterior wall of Public School 72, an underserved elementary school in East Harlem . After considering several designs suggested during an invitation-only design competition in May 2003, the students of P.S. 72 and a panel of community members and arts professionals chose the winning design.
This project, designed in collaboration by artist Marina Gutierrez and architect James F. Cornejo, created a functioning, sculptural “sundial” or “solar clock” on the school’s wall. This aluminum sun dial contains six “cultural arcs” of different lengths, positioned like hands of a clock around a protruding central indicator pole. Each arc contains two large, colorful symbols of one of the various peoples and cultures that have migrated in and out of East Harlem. We believe that this project will serve as a “gateway” to Spanish Harlem. It has served both the school children and the community at large.
P.S 193 Discovery of Dreams Mural Project (2003)
Discovery of Dreams Mural As part of the school’s commemoration of 50 years of excellence in education, the current students joined with alumni from the past 50 years, including many of their parents, to paint a mural on the school’s major exterior wall. Professional artist Karen Fitzgerald helped them apply extensive research about the history of their community to painting a permanent, historical mural.
The Living Sculpture Project (2001)
Living Scultpures CITYarts, in cooperation with the Floyd Bennett Field Gardens Association in Brooklyn and the National Parks Service, produced a large-scale unique environmental artwork located in a place where people bond with nature at the in Brooklyn. Created and designed by Bette Korman in collaboration with the Floyd Ben nett Field Gardens Association. Artist Bette Korman used the tree and plant life indigenous to the field to create a living screen along part of the main road near the 600 community gardens and the children’s garden.
Kids for Justice This art education and delinquency prevention program encourages children (ages 10–18) to develop and express their thoughts on justice through the creation of permanent murals for their schools. Youth meet with judicial representatives in open forums to discuss justice and social responsibility, and then use the creative process to express what they have learned. The program is tied directly to the students’ social studies curricula.
Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project
Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project This project was created in collaboration with a professional artist with approximately 200 students (ages 10 to 12) from C.S. 150. CITYarts spearheaded the renovation of a lot next to the school, a bilingual school in theSouth Bronx
that was once littered by drug vials and syringes. By encouraging the Bronx Borough President to contribute $100,000 to the project, a playground was created on the lot. A mural will be created at the school to complement this renovation. The theme will parallel the 5th and 6th grade social studies curriculum on the
United States
judicial system and will also introduce participating students to court representatives.
Tribute to New York and New Yorkers This program is our response to the events of September 11, 2001. CITYarts is creating 5–8 mural, mosaic and sculpture projects to contribute to rebuilding New York’s spiritual and physical space. Emphasis is placed on youth’s ability to build a more peaceful future for themselves by dreaming it first, through art. The first three murals in the series have already been completed and a fourth is in the planning stages.
Forever Tall Mural Project The Forever Tall Mural Project (2001)
The first mural in the series was created by artist Hope Gangloff in collaboration with youth from the Manhattan School of Career Development, The Dwight School (International), the Cooper Union School and community residents at 35 Cooper Square in Manhattan. It is a colorful tribute to the people who were affected by September 11 and to those who work tirelessly to bring our lives to a better place.
Alice on the Wall The Alice on the Wall Mural Project (2002)
The second mural in the series was designed and created by a professional artist with approximately 100 students from the Stuyvesant High School after they expressed a need for a mural to be painted along the wall leading from the Subway station on Chambers Street to their school on the West Side Highway. Prior to September 11, students were considering the theme of “Alice in Wonderland.” However, after the tragic events of September 11, heightened by the school’s location a half block from the World Trade Center, students and CITYarts modified the project. Entitled “Alice on the Wall,” the mural depicts Alice traveling through New York City past and present and illustrates the students’ hopes and dreams of a peaceful future. Begun in April, 2002, this project was completed at the beginning of the school-year at a celebration in September 2002.
Celebrating the Heroes of Our City Celebrating the Heroes of Our City Mural Project (2002)
The third mural in the series, is located at Henry M. Jackson Park on the Lower East Side. CITYarts and the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation worked together to select this site. Through f, over 200 youth, aged 8-16, who participated in local community organizations, including the Grand Street and Henry Street Settlements, were invited to honor the heroes of our city: the firefighters, policemen, and everyday New York citizens who have worked tirelessly towards recovering our lives and restoring our morale.
Windows of Opportunity Artistically talented youth (ages 10-18) who have worked on CITYarts projects, and who demonstrated their enthusiasm for developing their gift further, are chosen by CITYarts and enrolled in major art institutions, learning centers, special projects, and with individual artists. We are here to give them advice, recommend higher education, and track their development.
41st Anniversary Benefit Dinner & Auction
With our 41st Anniversary Benefit Dinner and Auction, CITYarts ushered in a Year of Peace, raising funds for our 2009 projects. The event was held at Sotheby's and was a great success.
Scholarship for Community Service Project
Elizabeth Murray Scholarship for Community Service Project
Awarded to an artistically talented student (ages 18-20) enrolled in higher education who continuously works on CITYarts projects.
Artist in Residence Program
CITYarts has an artist in residence program through dedicated funding from a foundation or corporation that support an artist pursuing individual projects or advanced degrees while participating in the creation of CITYarts public art.
Please visit the Projects Awaiting Funding page for more information on current projects
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| Young Minds Build Bridges |
Community Identity |
Kids for Justice |
Tribute to New York & New Yorkers |
Windows of Opportunity |
Please visit the Projects Awaiting Funding page for more information on current projects
Young Minds Build BridgesThis program brings together groups of youth from diverse cultural backgrounds to work together for a common artistic goal. CITYarts collaborates with international artists and youth via the internet to facilitate global communication and understanding. Through this program, CITYarts strives to strengthen bonds among youth from all over the world and to instill in them a positive attitude towards each other. Based on their ideas they will paint murals in their neighborhoods.
Launch the Pieces for Peace Website
The Pieces for Peace mosaic project is designed to build bridges of cultural understanding by bringing together American children and their peers from around the world. The long-term project began January 2004.
Visit our Pieces for Peace Website
PHASE I: The identification and selection of partner schools and participating students and teachers; the development of a Pieces for Peace website linking the participants; and the creation of web-based curricular and collaborative materials.
Date: Began January 2004 Ongoing
Launch CITYarts' New Online Mosaic
PHASE II: A web-based exchange of ideas and images about peace, leading to the conceptual development of the mosaic. Participants will express their hopes for a peaceful future through an online mosaic comprised of tile-size drawings, paintings, and poems.
Date: February 2005 – April 2006 Ongoing
PHASE III: Selected students from approximately 20 partner schools will participate in a New York residency, where they will work along side professional artists on the design and construction of the Pieces for Peace mosaic in Harlem .
Date: June – October 2005 Completed
PHASE IV: CITYarts has organized a traveling exhibition entitled: “Pieces for Peace Mosaic Project with Youth from around the World.” Starting at Flushing Town Hall, Queens, the exhibition includes 300 original artworks, photographs of the creative process, photos of the students in their schools, and a documentary video. Find out where the exhibit has traveled here.
Date: Began November/ December 2005 Ongoing
Global HeART Warming Global HeART Warming
Global HeART Warming is designed to engage youth in discussion about the current state of the environment and to create artworks that express both concerns and hopes for the future. It challenges youth to ask, "What can I do to reduce the speed of global warming?" It will include three phases - Workshops, Murals and Exhibitions.
Global HeART Warming Workshop with Fresh Air Fund (2009)
Youth from Fresh Air Fund visit the "Climate Change" exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. A workshop is then held where participants create artwork from recycled materials.
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
Global HeART Warming Partnership with the Health & Climate Foundation (2009)
As we continue our outreach to the youth around the world, we have created a second project entitled Global HeART Warming, celebrating nature and raising awareness of global warming. Our recent partnership with the Health & Climate Foundation headed by David Rogers will further and highlight this initiative which will encourage children and youth to ask, “What can I do to reduce the speed of global warming?” This phenomenon of course has implications on health caused by climate change. Continuing CITYarts’ successful method of addressing civic and social issues through art, children and youth in Geneva will be creating art in workshops, giving their thoughts and opinions in drawing, painting, and conversing at a conference titled World Climate Conference-3 (WCC3). We will exhibit their artworks and highlight their voices, perhaps with a mural on-site and conversations on the subject with professionals in the field and participants of the conference. Photos of artwork and discussion forums will follow soon. Meanwhile, for more information on the partnership or on donating to the initiative, please read the statement proposal of the partnership between CITYarts and the Health & Climate Foundation.
Find out more
Living Planters (2009)
Living Planters CITYarts is collaborating with Stonehenge Management LLC to revitalize the scenery in the courtyard if the Stonehenge Village apartment complex. This summer, CITYarts artists worked with the youth at the complex to create designs for 18 planters, and are now painting the designs.
View more pictures
Nature is Love on Earth (2008)
Nature is Love on Earth In Summer 2008, CITYarts has revitalized the scenery at the St. John’s Recreation Center, and at the same time provided youth with the opportunity to harness their creativity and renew their previously vandalized walls for a worthy, global cause. The mural is a collaboration between CITYarts and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the third of five murals across the five boroughs of New York City in CITYarts’ Global HeART Warming project. It aims to raise awareness of climate change while celebrating nature. Global HeART Warming calls upon youth from New York City and around the world to answer the question, “What can I do to reduce the speed of global warming?”
View more pictures
Community Identity This neighborhood revitalization program addresses social issues through site-specific works of art. Local artists, youth, their families and their community collaborate to create art for their neighborhood. Artworks completed under this program reflect the spirit of the participating communities and bring their diverse residents together. Our goal is to encourage participating youth and adults to appreciate their cultural heritage but also to celebrate an identity in their new homeland.
Rolling Bench Restoration at Grant's Tomb (2008)
Rolling Bench Restoration CITYarts' volunteers worked with original artist Pedro Silva and his son Tony Silva to restore the Rolling Benches of Grant's Tomb. Over three months in the summer of 2008, volunteers cleaned the bench, chipped away broken tiles, cut and replaced tiles, grout, and polished the benches.
View more pictures
The Helio–Chronometer (Reloj solar) Sculpture Project (2004)
Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project A permanent sculptural installation has been created on the exterior wall of Public School 72, an underserved elementary school in East Harlem . After considering several designs suggested during an invitation-only design competition in May 2003, the students of P.S. 72 and a panel of community members and arts professionals chose the winning design.
This project, designed in collaboration by artist Marina Gutierrez and architect James F. Cornejo, created a functioning, sculptural “sundial” or “solar clock” on the school’s wall. This aluminum sun dial contains six “cultural arcs” of different lengths, positioned like hands of a clock around a protruding central indicator pole. Each arc contains two large, colorful symbols of one of the various peoples and cultures that have migrated in and out of East Harlem. We believe that this project will serve as a “gateway” to Spanish Harlem. It has served both the school children and the community at large.
P.S 193 Discovery of Dreams Mural Project (2003)
Discovery of Dreams Mural As part of the school’s commemoration of 50 years of excellence in education, the current students joined with alumni from the past 50 years, including many of their parents, to paint a mural on the school’s major exterior wall. Professional artist Karen Fitzgerald helped them apply extensive research about the history of their community to painting a permanent, historical mural.
The Living Sculpture Project (2001)
Living Scultpures CITYarts, in cooperation with the Floyd Bennett Field Gardens Association in Brooklyn and the National Parks Service, produced a large-scale unique environmental artwork located in a place where people bond with nature at the in Brooklyn. Created and designed by Bette Korman in collaboration with the Floyd Ben nett Field Gardens Association. Artist Bette Korman used the tree and plant life indigenous to the field to create a living screen along part of the main road near the 600 community gardens and the children’s garden.
Kids for Justice This art education and delinquency prevention program encourages children (ages 10–18) to develop and express their thoughts on justice through the creation of permanent murals for their schools. Youth meet with judicial representatives in open forums to discuss justice and social responsibility, and then use the creative process to express what they have learned. The program is tied directly to the students’ social studies curricula.
Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project
Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project This project was created in collaboration with a professional artist with approximately 200 students (ages 10 to 12) from C.S. 150. CITYarts spearheaded the renovation of a lot next to the school, a bilingual school in the
Tribute to New York and New Yorkers This program is our response to the events of September 11, 2001. CITYarts is creating 5–8 mural, mosaic and sculpture projects to contribute to rebuilding New York’s spiritual and physical space. Emphasis is placed on youth’s ability to build a more peaceful future for themselves by dreaming it first, through art. The first three murals in the series have already been completed and a fourth is in the planning stages.
Forever Tall Mural Project The Forever Tall Mural Project (2001)
The first mural in the series was created by artist Hope Gangloff in collaboration with youth from the Manhattan School of Career Development, The Dwight School (International), the Cooper Union School and community residents at 35 Cooper Square in Manhattan. It is a colorful tribute to the people who were affected by September 11 and to those who work tirelessly to bring our lives to a better place.
Alice on the Wall The Alice on the Wall Mural Project (2002)
The second mural in the series was designed and created by a professional artist with approximately 100 students from the Stuyvesant High School after they expressed a need for a mural to be painted along the wall leading from the Subway station on Chambers Street to their school on the West Side Highway. Prior to September 11, students were considering the theme of “Alice in Wonderland.” However, after the tragic events of September 11, heightened by the school’s location a half block from the World Trade Center, students and CITYarts modified the project. Entitled “Alice on the Wall,” the mural depicts Alice traveling through New York City past and present and illustrates the students’ hopes and dreams of a peaceful future. Begun in April, 2002, this project was completed at the beginning of the school-year at a celebration in September 2002.
Celebrating the Heroes of Our City Celebrating the Heroes of Our City Mural Project (2002)
The third mural in the series, is located at Henry M. Jackson Park on the Lower East Side. CITYarts and the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation worked together to select this site. Through f, over 200 youth, aged 8-16, who participated in local community organizations, including the Grand Street and Henry Street Settlements, were invited to honor the heroes of our city: the firefighters, policemen, and everyday New York citizens who have worked tirelessly towards recovering our lives and restoring our morale.
Windows of Opportunity Artistically talented youth (ages 10-18) who have worked on CITYarts projects, and who demonstrated their enthusiasm for developing their gift further, are chosen by CITYarts and enrolled in major art institutions, learning centers, special projects, and with individual artists. We are here to give them advice, recommend higher education, and track their development.
41st Anniversary Benefit Dinner & Auction
With our 41st Anniversary Benefit Dinner and Auction, CITYarts ushered in a Year of Peace, raising funds for our 2009 projects. The event was held at Sotheby's and was a great success.
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
Scholarship for Community Service Project
Elizabeth Murray Scholarship for Community Service Project
Awarded to an artistically talented student (ages 18-20) enrolled in higher education who continuously works on CITYarts projects.
Artist in Residence Program
CITYarts has an artist in residence program through dedicated funding from a foundation or corporation that support an artist pursuing individual projects or advanced degrees while participating in the creation of CITYarts public art.
Please visit the Projects Awaiting Funding page for more information on current projects
Return to Top