India
Cartwheel Initiative is thrilled to have partnered with Santiniketan Sishutirtha, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to restore the basic human rights of less fortunate children.
In the inaugural year of our collaboration, Cartwheel Initiative’s teaching artists will conduct an art workshop for 20 children on April 13, 2025.
Images and artworks from the workshop will be posted shortly.
United States
Cartwheel Initiative conducted workshops in New York City and New Jersey with students from various schools, such as The International High School (IHS), the Mott Hall School, and with students from the organization Interfaith-RISE.
The International High School (IHS)
Cartwheel Initiative worked with The International High School (IHS) at Union Square in collaboration with The Children’s Museum of the Arts. The group comprised of teenagers from Haiti, Senegal, Yemen, El Salvador, Gambia, Eritrea, Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Mexico and Nepal who are temporarily living in the U.S. due to conflict, violence or natural disasters in their home countries. Students used photography, animation, as well as written and spoken word to verbalize and visualize their personal stories of both the home they left behind and their current community in New York.
As our students cultivate their talents, achieve fluency in English, and consider the next steps of their lives as new members of the New York City community, their path provides a roadmap for other students facing similar circumstances.
Below are a few of the multimedia pieces created during the workshops.
The Mott Hall School
Cartwheel developed a specialized curriculum and workshop for The Mott Hall School and each participating organization along with a donation of Adobe software for the participants (courtesy of the Adobe Foundation/TakingITGlobal).The Mott Hall School is in East Harlem, and is in partnership with FutureConnect. Below is some student work!
The students created visual essays about their neighborhood in East Harlem, linked below.
Interfaith-RISE
Cartwheel Initiative's team of artists recently collaborated with Interfaith-RISE, an official affiliate site of the US Committee for Refugees & Immigrants based in Central New Jersey. Interfaith-RISE assists with housing, ESL, social services, education, medical assistance, mental health services, transportation, and supportive community integration as families and individuals journey towards self-sufficiency and independence.
During this short "I Have a Voice" engagement, the theme was once again based on exploring the concept of home and identity. The class comprised of students from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Congo and the Middle East. Students created photographs of an object they brought from their original home country or from their new adopted home in the US in addition to making portraits. Short video clips about their stories were also produced. Check out some of the student work here!
Sri Lanka
For almost 30 years (1983-2009), Sri Lanka experienced a devastating ethnic civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist militant organization, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that claimed over 80,000 people and crippled the country’s economy, infrastructure, and environment.
Starting in 2011, Cartwheel Initiative conducted workshops in graphic design, collage, photography, and music at 3 schools in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Nearly 200 children participated in our custom designed hands-on workshops. Workshops discussed the subjectivity involved in art-making, the role of the artist as the decision maker, and the ways in which art can communicate emotion. Students were encouraged to share their work and express opinions. Another workshop was conducted over the course of two weeks at the Foundation of Goodness in Seenigama. Youth between the ages of 13 and 17 worked under the supervision of Cartwheel’s visiting team of artists to create stop-motion animation short films and photo essays. In the process, they learned filmmaking, photography, visual art, documentation, and music-scoring skills. The films were exhibited at the Foundation of Goodness in Sri Lanka and at The Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York.
Multimedia pieces created by students
In order to insure sustainability of our project, we left behind a complete film-making kit and trained foundation staff in its use, thus equipping them to develop their own curricular innovations and lead future storytelling exercises, both in Seenigama and at a Learning and Empowerment Center currently being developed in the country’s war-torn North. The Foundation of Goodness established a multimedia program as a result.
