The Dandelion School Transformation Project in China

"We should transform every corner, and every wall and space in our school environment. We should allow more hands-on participation of teachers and students. We want to beautify our school with brushes and colors. Also, we need to increase the plants in our school. Let us, the students and teachers, experience personally the feeling of planting trees and flowers." —Song Tzi-Yang, an eighth grader at the Dandelion School

Indeed, the whole school community participated in the transformation of the school campus in the spring of 2008 in painting and mosaic making and in planting flowers and trees.

Located in a heavily polluted industrial section on the outskirts of Beijing, the Dandelion School is the only nonprofit organization in the city that serves the needs of 620 children of poor migrant workers coming from 24 provinces. Having tripled both its student population and programs in a brief three-year history, the Dandelion School is determined to provide quality education to the most disfranchised community in this vast city. Its programs and activities manifest its motto, "Ai Man Tian Xia, Let the heaven and earth be filled with love."

The project was launched last year when artist Lily Yeh worked with the whole school community to envision and create designs for the transformation of the school environment.

Transforming the Dandelion School Environment

Dandelion School Transformation Project in China Click here to enlarge

While great energy and enthusiasm emanate from the Dandelion School community, the school environment feels inhospitable, barren and harsh. During her return visit this summer, Lily Yeh guided a process to bring beauty to the Dandelion School, a beauty nurtured and groomed from the depth of the cultural roots of the community and shaped together by all the people in the school through a procedure of open participation, review, design selection and implementation. Based on student artwork and the work of Ku SuLan, an awe-inspiring and influential self-taught 20th century female Chinese peasant artist, Yeh created the final designs for the school entrance and multiple walls on campus. Teachers, staff, volunteers and hundreds of students took part in installing mosaics that empowered individuals, enhanced social bonds among participants and transformed the environment from sterility to beauty and joy. The process deepened people's understanding of their own cultural heritage and their creative power within.

Transforming Junk into Art

"Cultivate us to have the ability to find angels in hell," requested a teacher during Yeh's workshop in the spring. After discovering a large pile of crumbled canvases in the corner of the art room, Yeh decided to demonstrate a re-creation process through which this would happen. The canvases had been painted collectively by groups of students in the previous year. One senses a raw power coming from the bold, spontaneous and in-your-face designs unintentionally created by students. Their value and potential were hidden in the layers of paint and their random designs often seemed to overlap or cross each other out.

The finished Dandelion School entrance Click here to enlarge

Yeh organized student helpers to rework some of the paintings and turned others into collages. Recruiting assistance from volunteers and Wang Xiu-Mei, the school gatekeeper and a fine peasant embroidery artist, Yeh set up a production studio where the team created a series of stunning embroidered and quilt-framed paintings. Some teachers took the paintings to their students to name and comment. We sold two pieces from this body of "re-created" works, to raise funds for the Dandelion Crafts Production Studio. Thus the process of creating assets through culture and creativity has begun at Dandelion. Below is a poem written about a quilt-framed painting which students named "the ocean."

Message from the Ocean

Along the ocean
Humming a deep heart song
Gentle waves accompanying
What belongs to us is always happiness
Not sorrow
Facing the fiercely rolling sea water
Let go what needs to be let go
Imagine freely what needs to be imagined
Standing on the bank of the ocean is not the sun
------------It is we
What we are holding within is not dead water
------------It is the ocean waves.

—Jian Huey, 8th grade 2nd class

Art as a Powerful Tool To Address Urgent Social Issues: The Tree of Problems & the Tree of Life

The Tree of Problems and the Tree of Life Click here to enlarge

One of the most pressing challenges the Dandelion community faces is belligerent and destructive student behavior, such as fighting, cursing, smoking, drinking and gang activities, especially from newcomers to the school. Witnessing the power of art in transforming a barren concrete wall into a colorful mural of the Tree of Life last year, teachers took up art as their main vehicle of communication, and the Tree of Problems and the Tree of Life as their theme, to address student behavior problems.

The whole student body of over 600 members participated in the project. Equipped with an innovative methodology that they hammered out together, teachers coached students in the school's 12 classes to produce 24 impressive images that pointed to the causes of the problems as well as their solutions. This month-long project culminated in a day-long event called "the battle against offensive behaviors." All the images created by the students were exhibited in the open campus. Students expressed their determination through words and performances. All students took pledges and signed their names on a 20'-long banner of determination. Dandelion School authorities reported that incidents caused by students' offensive behaviors reduced by 70% after the project. A powerful and effective process indeed!

This story is excerpted from the Barefoot Artists newsletter, August 2008.

Lily Yeh is an artist who founded Barefoot Artists in 2003 as a volunteer organization that uses the power of art to transform impoverished communities. Based in Philadelphia, Pa., they are currently working China and Africa, China, the Middle East, Ecuador and Italy. From 1986 through 2004, Lily Yeh served as the co-founder, executive director and lead artist of The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia.

Kelly Tannen has spent nearly 20 years working in and with nonprofit social-service and arts organizations. With an education in social work, she spent many years working in youth development before shifting to fundraising and development. She currently works as a freelance grant writer and fundraising consultant for several Philadelphia-based nonprofits. 

Original CAN/API publication: August 2008