Awakening Creativity
Dandelion School Blossoms
Format:Hardback
Publisher:New Village Press
Published:1st Jun '11
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Awakening Creativity shows in gloriously illustrated detail how Lily Yeh guides a participatory process of artistic expression that uplifts a distressed community. Her open, joyful approach to artmaking is a model for building healthy cultural esteem.
Lily Yeh is an acclaimed visual artist who has worked with students, community leaders and teachers in Canada, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Syria, Italy and in cities and neighborhoods across the United States. Yeh is considered one of America's most innovative urban designers and social pioneers. Awakening Creativity is her first, much-awaited book.
In Awakening Creativity, Yeh facilitates the art-making process for students of The Dandelion School, the only nonprofit organization in Beijing that serves the children of poor migrant workers coming from 24 provinces. Yeh worked with hundreds of students, teachers, volunteers and workers to transform the school's main campus with mural painting, mosaics, and environmental sculpture. Students were involved in every aspect of the art-making, which has become central to the school's curriculum and well-being.
Lily Yeh founded Barefoot Artists, a volunteer organization that uses the power of art to revitalize impoverished communities. Yeh is also the co-founder and former director of The Village of Arts and Humanities that has brought to life over 200 abandoned lots in the most distressed districts of North Philadelphia.
"""Creativity is a certain flare of spirit that is truly unlike anything else. Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms is a call for social change through creativity from Lily Yeh, as she shares her own drive to make the world a better place through art and tells her story of turning a wasted factory space in Beijing into something that is so much more - the Dandelion school, aimed at the local children to give them inspiration for a better future. With a certain dedication, Awakening Creativity comes with a powerful message that definitely should not be overlooked."" * Midwest Book Review, 2011 *
""Art is in all of us, and the best seek to encourage it in others. Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms is a chronicle of author Lily Yeh's journeys, offered as an example for encourage art all over the world. Focusing on her campaign in China, where she got an abandoned factory converted to encourage local middle school students, and helped them find artistic expression. Presented in full color and plenty of example art works throughout, Awakening Creativity is a choice pick for any educational collection dedicated to promoting the arts."" * Midwest Book Review 2012 *
""As a case study, Awakening Creativity is both inspirational and detailed... At every step from concept to completion, Yeh recruits members of the school community, including students, as genuine collaborators in the artistic process. The result is a series of works that reverberate throughout the lives of their co-creators. The art beautifies the campus, but its impact is far deeper: it gives students the skills and the inspiration to be active co-creators of their own lives."" -- Joseph Hart * Public Art Review *
""Yeh’s book should be used as a model in run-down schools everywhere. It should be used in community development training and in every school of design. Her work is the best of what art can do to build the human spirit and make a community place. Thank you, Lily, for your work and for documenting it so carefully in this book."" -- Susan Goltsman * Children, Youth and Environments *
""It is not often that a book can transport the reader to another place and time, but Yeh has done this successfully. By including color images on every page, the reader gets lost in the school and community and makes readers feel part of the project from the beginning. Yeh tells a captivating story."" -- Carolyn Brown Treadon * Journal of Art for Life *
ISBN: 9780981559377
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 880g
208 pages