Programs/Projects

Please visit the Projects Awaiting Funding page for more information on current projects

Young Minds Build Bridges Program:

This 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.

Pieces for Peace Mosaic

Pieces for Peace Mosaic: With Youth from Around the World Project

The Pieces for Peace mosaic project is designed to build bridges of international understanding by bringing together American children and their peers from around the world. The multi-year project began January 2004.

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. It will next travel to the Cork Gallery, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center Plaza in May.
Date: Began November/ December 2005 Ongoing

Community Identity Program:

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.

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The Helio-Chronometer Sculpture Project

The Helio–Chronometer (Reloj solar) Sculpture Project (2004)

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 sundial 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.

. heliochronometer sculpture
Discovery of Dreams Mural Project

P.S 193 Discovery of Dreams Mural Project (2003)

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.

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The Living Sculpture Project

The Living Sculpture Project (2001)

CITYarts in cooperation with the Floyd Bennett Field Gardens Association in Brooklyn and the National Park Service produced a large-scale unique environmental artwork located in a place where people bond with nature at the Floyd Bennet Field Gardens 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 Program:

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 of creating a mural to express what they have learned. The program is tied directly to the students’ social studies curricula.

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Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project

The Our Playground Has Arrived Mural Project

This project will be created in the, by a professional artist, in collaboration with approximately 200 students (ages 10 to 12) from the school. Five years ago, CITYarts spearheaded the renovation of an lot next to C.S. 150, a bilingual school in the South 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 5^th and 6^th 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” Program:

This program is our response to the events of September 11th. 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.

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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.

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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 of 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.

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Celebrating the Heros of Our City

The 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 Program:"

Artistically talented youth (ages 10-16) who have worked on a CITYarts project, and who demonstrate 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.

. elizeth murray scholarship fund
Elizebeth Murray Scholarship Fund

Elizebeth Murray Scholarship Fund