Creating Change through Creativity

Youth facing life challenges learn to express themselves and heal through arts education, thanks to a Museum Without Walls grant.

At the RYSE Hawai’i shelter in Kailua, youth and young adults who are facing challenges in their lives can stop by to receive free support services, including hot showers and meals, laundry facilities, clothing, as well as referrals to stable housing, medical and mental health care, and counseling. This past fall, they also had the opportunity to get something you might not expect: art classes taught by a La Sorbonne-educated artist.

Fatiha Kheddaoui is a teaching artist originally from France with a wide range of skills including screen printing, drawing, bronze casting, painting, ceramics, and video. She has years of experience teaching K-through-12 and art residencies in France and Panama, and has exhibited her work extensively around the world. Now in Hawai‘i, she created an art residency with nonprofit organization Residential Youth Services & Empowerment (RYSE), to bring the transformative power of art to young people.

“I use art as a tool to connect with people,” Fatiha says. “I like for it to be a conversation. I don’t like making art alone; I’m much more interested in having someone sit down with me, start creating, and suddenly I’m learning so much about their creativity and who they are.”

Fatiha says one of her art projects during the residency was to have youth take a basic back-pack and add to it using whatever art supplies they wanted—whether paint or stitching or applique—to tell a story about them¬selves and their lives. “Some of them started very cute, very nice,” she says, “but over the course of a few sessions, as we started to build trust with them, they started to open up and incorporate more of the realities from their lives, the challenges they’re facing. It was amazing to see them progress.”

Carla Houser, executive director at RYSE, says Fatiha’s art workshops gave their youth much-needed space to imagine, reflect, and create. “We’ve always believed that healing and self-expression are powerful tools in a young person’s journey,” she says. “RYSE youth not only developed new skills but also built confidence and connection.”

Fatiha’s art residency was made possible through funding from the Museum Without Walls Arts Education Initiative, a grant program at the Hawai‘i Community Foundation (HCF) in partnership with the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts focused on increasing access to arts education in Hawai‘i. The initiative supports residencies focused on the fine arts targeted to reach participants and communities that experience barriers or challenges to accessing arts education.

Fatiha says she aspires to expand this kind of art residency to other schools and organizations throughout O‘ahu and Hawai‘i, along with other teaching artists, so that everyone has an opportunity to learn and connect with art, and to unlock their creativity.

However, with the current, volatile situation with U.S. federal and state budget cuts, future funding for arts education programs like Museum Without Walls could be in jeopardy.

Elise von Dohlen, HCF’s Arts and Culture program director, says, “The impact of this program exemplifies the power of the arts to provide a safe space for healing and connection. There is an even greater need for arts education in communities across Hawai‘i.”

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