Here's a nice short report from THE Ohio State University: "Discovering a Community’s Heart through Community Art." A report from one of the Service-Learning Initiative’s 2007 Course Development Grants, Service-Learning through Collaborative Art in Weinland Park (Karen Hutzel, Assistant Professor, Department of Art Education; partner: Catherine Girves, Director, University Area Enrichment Association):

“Children in Weinland Park wave when you drive by. They ask your name. They want to be ballerinas and teachers and basketball players. They are creative and funny and rascally.” Columbus Dispatch, July 12, 2007.

We realized the essence of community through a service-learning project in Weinland Park’s neighborhood. Five OSU graduate students in Art Education, one professor, a community partner, and many kids spent a week exploring the assets of the community to inspire the creation of a community art piece. The graduate students, all art teachers in places as far as Alaska and as near as Columbus, had little knowledge of the neighborhood. Their initial encounters were of a strong sense of community in an apartment complex that housed single mothers. The graduate students commented on the village feeling present in this housing complex—older kids looked out for younger ones, referring to each other as brothers and sisters, while the mothers were caring and supervisory of all the children.

We were the outsiders, especially the graduate students who came from so far. The children were our guides, experts on their community. The result was a painted community art piece of multiple canvases, tied together and hung by a wood curtain rod. The art piece reflected many assets in the community, including the natural, human, and social assets we discovered during a mapping of the neighborhood. The art piece reflects the theme of the community garden we encountered at the neighborhood Godman Guild and currently hangs at the neighborhood library. It will travel around the community and eventually find its home in the new community policing center to open next year. Several of the graduate students/art educators left with a renewed sense of community and desire to use service-learning in their own schools.

The Service-Learning Initiative

   

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