Art in Action

Art Track: Visual Arts

Street Art is what brings color and life to community movements. Large and powerful banners, giant puppets and beautiful flags tell the story of the people marching in the streets, they carry a message that can’t be ignored by by-standers and make a cause irresistible to the media.

At the Art in Action Youth Leadership Training, the Visual Arts track is filled with days of spray paint, using power drills, bringing cardboard and paint to life and learning how to turn ever day house hold items into incredible street and performance visual art.

Creating Street Art means bringing your drawings and ideas to a huge scale for everyone to see. In the visual arts track you will learn the history of street art in the U.S. and abroad and how visual art in the streets has helped to bring messages of all kinds to global attention. In this track there are opportunities to learn how to conceptualize and build Giant Puppets that usually depict heroes or villains of social justice movements. At past trainings Giant Puppets have taken on specific roles and are like cast members at the final performance.

Participants also get to try their hands at mural making, prop building, banner and flag making and graffiti arts. All of these formats of street art help create a unifying message that you get to decide on with the rest of the youth participants at camp. Murals and banners create beautiful backdrops for theater performances. Props help create and tell the stories that the actors on stage want to tell. Flag making and graffiti arts are also used to create energy on the stage and express to our audience what Art in Action is all about.

An important aspect of the visual arts track is collaboration. How do individual artists work together for one goal? It’s an important question that Art in Action Youth Leadership Training answers through practice. Artistic collaboration is key to getting a message for social justice out to the larger community!