By Jeanne Heifetz

In May, 2010, we partnered with Brooklyn for Barack to offer arts workshops — many with a therapeutic component — to children who had arrived in the U.S. since the earthquake, as well as children already living here who had been affected by the catastrophe. The 40 arts workshops, held over four consecutive Saturdays, were designed to give the kids a way to express their feelings about the upheaval in their families and community, to provide cultural enrichment and connection to their Haitian heritage, as well as simply to offer them some much-needed fun.

The newly formed Hope and Healing Fund of the Brooklyn Community Foundation awarded HCX a grant to help cover the basic costs of the program. We also received many wonderful individual donations of  art supplies and snacks. The office of the Deputy Mayor for Education connected us with K-189, the Bilingual School, which agreed to host the workshops and whose staff were warm and welcoming partners throughout the month. Forty percent of K-189’s student body is Haitian or Haitian-American. The school had also taken in 30 children directly from Haiti after the earthquake, and their counselors helped make sure those children would attend the workshops.

Volunteers came from all over NYC and as far away as New Jersey and Massachusetts to lead workshops. Teachers, writers, musicians, dancers, visual artists, art therapists, drama and movement therapists — everyone wanted to help. Students from several NYC high schools came to lend a hand. The members of BelTiFi, a Haitian-American young women’s organization, provided invaluable Kreyol support for the non-Haitian workshop leaders.

The workshops served children from 3 to 14. The youngest children and their parents all went to Krik-Krak, which combined storytelling, music, and art. Older children who had experienced trauma went to workshops like Mandalas, to help them relax and focus; and Safety Box, in which they created a physical representation of the people and things they had lost or wanted to protect. Several parents who had been in Haiti during the earthquake also participated in these therapeutic activities.

Not surprisingly, house and home were a recurring theme in many workshops. In one workshop, the kids created their own superheroes and heroines, including one who had the power to rebuild destroyed houses. In another workshop, kids envisioned homes for the new Haiti and then built architectural models. In another, the kids made their own dolls — and homes for the dolls.

Many of the workshops were about instilling cultural pride. Kids made Haitian kites,  and painted images of Haiti on silk for a wall hanging. They made marionettes based on the characters from a Haitian folktale. In the drumming workshop, kids learned about the drums of the different regions of Haiti, how they’re made and how they’re played.

Over the course of the four weeks, the kids worked on two murals. The first was done with markers and watercolors on sheets of oaktag, a series of giant “Get Well” cards for Haiti. For the painted mural, the students traced one another’s outlines on canvas under the guidance of HCX board member Vladimir Cybil Charlier; each child was depicted holding a tool like a hammer or a saw to help rebuild Haiti. The completed mural will travel to Haiti with volunteers from the International Children’s Art Foundation  as part of their Hope and Healing project (their project director, art therapist Chantal Antoine, volunteered all four weekends, working with the kids who had experienced the earthquake directly).

On the final day, we held a celebration of Flag Day that included a flag-making workshop, singing of the Haitian national anthem and a reading of poetry written by the students. Members of K-189’s Haitian dance troupe performed. As the principal said at our closing ceremony, these kids are hungry for art, and the month of workshops represents the beginning of what we hope will be a long-lasting partnership between HCX and K-189.