ARTicipation workshops

P.S.1 MoMA, the Queens Museum of Art, the New York Hall of Science, the New York Parks Department, and Socrates Sculpture Park are just some of the museums and institutions that have featured Free Style Arts projects through their education departments. These projects give people a taste of why art is made in the many ways it is. Free Style art educators come equipped with interesting materials, and with a little coaxing and direction, students of the class or visitors to the museum become the artists, all collaborating to create a giant abstract sculpture, painting, or installation. These projects sometimes happen in the museum classroom, sometimes in the museum gallery, and sometimes in public outside the museum.

You can request projects from the list or meet with Free Style Arts to create a new project tailored to your needs.

In-school and after school arts-in-education classes

Free Style Arts workshops have been taught to hundreds of students at many schools in the New York City area. Programs are available for special needs groups, E.S.L., parent programs, and staff development. All workshops can be integrated into the curriculum being currently studied by the class. These workshops, taught by practicing New York City artists, provide a fun and unique way for students to learn their subject in a new way and to learn about the art of NYC today, as well. Through collaborative and abstract art-making students develop literacy with expression and interpretation, tools they use to better work with classmates as a supportive and creative team.

All workshops are taught once or twice a week to as many as five classes in one day, or as two-hour after-school programs. All in-school programs are recommended at 10 sessions, but shorter workshops, and one-session workshops are available as well, as are 20 week or longer after-school programs.

Classroom T.V Station

Have your class make a T.V. show, news show, animation, music video, advertisement campaign, or documentary:

Using digital video cameras and sound recording equipment students are taught how to make their own t.v. show, news show, animation, music video, ad campaign, or documentary related to what they are studying. Over the course of the program students lea technical elements of writing, directing, computer editing, and team delegation.

• In the Music Video workshop students learn to make their own music, beats, and songs with equipment provided or their own instruments.
• In the animation workshop students make their own pose able sculptures and sets from clay and other materials.
• By the end of the program, the class has produced a series of videos that are burned to DVD's for the students, with the cover art designed by the class.

Classroom Art Museum

Have your students create their own contemporary art museum featuring murals, abstract paintings and sculptures, portraits, costumes, puppets, picture books, large installation sculptures, and more.

Using the materials, tools, and techniques of contemporary NYC artists, students are taught how to make their own art pieces related to what they are studying. Over the course of the program students develop literacy with painting, drawing, sculpting, and writing by doing unique group projects that help draw out each student's inner creativity and confidence with communicating.

Dependent on the teacher's preference, more time can be spent on a certain art project such as murals, puppets, or picture books. By the end of the program, the class has created it's own bright and interesting art museum hung on the walls and ceiling of the classroom, and perhaps in the halls of the school as well.

Visual-art assembly performances

Free Style “Arts on Stage” assembly show has been performed thousands of students at many schools throughout the NYC area. Through short audience participation “acts” volunteers come up on stage to make giant relay race paintings, envision surrealist landscapes, and create and watch a cartoon animation. After each project a 3-minute video is played that describes some of the famous artists that created in the style of art just seen on stage. This visual art assembly is a great way to teach students about art and their own ability to self-express, in a brief amount of time.

Assemblies can be done as individual or back-to-back shows for groups of up to 250 in each show.

Hands-on art-making field trips

A field trip with Free Style Arts is the best way of experiencing being a public artist first-hand. Students meet at Free Style's Long Island City, or Williamsburg location, or at any public location. First students are taught about some well known public art projects, and then they are involved in assembling and enacting an art project where people walking down the street are invited by the students to add to an art piece. The art piece people add to could be a large painting, a large sculpture made from balloons, colored string, and cardboard tubes, a giant fort built in a public park, a zoo of giant cardboard animals made by people walking by, or giant drawings made by remote control cars with markers attached to them. Students also document the project with digital cameras. Students have a fun experience with really taking responsibility for the project and they learn about teamwork and production as well as contemporary public art-making skills. At the end of the project the art pieces and photographs are taken back to the school and displayed as a chronicle of the event.

Assemblies are limited to groups of 15 mature students, grades 5-12 picked by their teachers to participate.

After-school arts workshops at The GlassLands Gallery

For students in grades 4-12.

Free Style Arts after-school workshops connect top local artists with serious students and school groups at The Glasslands, a Williamsburg performance space, host to the Yea, Yea, Yea's most recent music video and T.V. on the Radio's intimate performances, to name a few. Well known Williamsburg artists in a variety of fields such as Music, Visual Art, Film, Creative Writing, Music Production, and The Business of the Arts teach students one-on-one about the field of their choice. After school programs can be attended weekly for a whole season or just a few times. Through this program students can take advantage of the rich culture they have in their own backyard. Summer day programs are available.