Birthing a healing art program for young people Community Art Leaders was born out of a collaboration with Milwaukee Christian Center through their youth development program, Youth Artists United. Their program helps young people develop self-confidence, collaboration and communication skills through working with an artist-in-residence. The year was 2018. This time, rather then focus on studio art, they wanted to offer their target neighborhood, Muskego Way and its community partners a chance to do a community mural. So they reached out to me. The traditional length of their program was 14 weeks, way more time than I was accustomed to on any normal mural project, where residents would participate in a few visioning sessions and community paint days. This provided an opportunity for more to happen with the young people I'd be working with - but the question came up in me as to what I'd be doing with them.  How would I fill the time? I figured, well, they need to learn what we...

 Reflection Today we played a new warm-up game designed for calming and listening. The group sits in a circle. One person sits blind-folded in the middle seated on a chair. A 'treasure' is placed under the chair (can be any item of symbolic value; I used a little box full of agate crystals). On my command - with a silent point - one by one they silently try to steal the treasure. The person in the middle has to try to listen for any sound or movement and catch the person by pointing in their direction. I love this game, and they always have fun.  It went well. The last time we played it, they wanted to make a lot of side noises. This morning I decided to ask the group to play by the rules, to not make side noises. I came up with the idea to say we'd tried it the other way before, reflected on it, so we know how that went. I knew they'd get more out of it in playing the game where everyone has a fair chance. So I proposed everyone take a chance to discover something new ...