The Dreamers – Cambridge Community Art Center
2024 SCI Youth Grant Pitch Contest Project
The Dreamers - Cambridge Community Art Center
Through the creation of visual art, The Dreamers Youth Team hopes to make public artwork that strikes a conversation; one that can help bring awareness to issues surrounding mental health. With their grant award of $1,000, the Dreamers will create a large-scale painting on canvas, which will be turned into large-scale posters. They will wheatpaste their mural images in the community, creating a “campaign” to inform and encourage conversation around mental health awareness, with 6 – 10 of the images being installed around the city. The hope is that these images will continue to eat away at the stigma concerning mental health challenges.
In preparation of creating the final design, the Dreamers have had frequent conversations around mental health, and researched local mental health resources that are available for community and youth. The Dreamers have completed several designs for their public art campaign. Youth are currently considering and synthesizing all of the designs and information they have gathered, and are in the process of creating their art piece on a large-scale painting. Once complete, that design will be digitized and turned into lightweight wheatpaste posters to be installed around the City. The posters will be biodegradable, and are meant to be temporary.
The presence of the public art in multiple locations throughout Cambridge will serve as a reminder of the importance of mental health awareness, and the importance of community care. The camaraderie built among the Dreamers team as they’ve worked on this project together, reinforces the underlying power of community to combat isolation and build healthy relationships; the hope is that this lesson will bind to the youth participants as much as the project serves the wider community.
