BIMA is pleased to feature art by students in a variety of Path with Art programs. Path with Art, the Seattle-based organization, transforms the lives of people recovering from homelessness, addiction, and other trauma by harnessing the power of creative engagement as a bridge to community and a path to stability.

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HOW PATH WITH ART DOES IT

Arts Education: Path with Art’s year-round classes provide hands-on, dynamic, and skill-building arts education in a variety of disciplines – from Sumi painting to Shakespeare – by award-winning, professional teaching artists in a safe and caring community environment.

Exhibitions and Showcases: We hold regular public exhibitions, performances, and showcases to celebrate our students’ artistic achievements. These events are powerful for both our students and the broader community, allowing the public to better understand the population we serve through their art versus statistics.

Access Art: Participants are provided access to exhibitions and performances at professional art venues. This year we hope to see 42 such trips to programming at our 30+ arts partners.

Community Connection: Path with Art creates art-making opportunities that facilitate collaboration between our participants and the broader public in order to bring disparate groups of people together, foster deeper understanding, and see each other through the human lens of art.

Social Service Partner Workshops: Path with Art provides on-site art workshops for select social service partners, which support and build communities within. Art created in these workshops is then used to decorate the walls of our partners’ buildings.

Arts Partner Trainings: We’ve recently started offering a professional development training for staff, leadership, and volunteers in regional arts organizations who want to make their spaces more welcoming to those who are low-income and in recovery.

MORE FROM PATH WITH ART:

OUR MISSION Path with Art transforms the lives of adults in recovery from homelessness, addiction, and other trauma by harnessing the power of creative engagement as a bridge to community and a path to stability.

WHAT WE DO We envision a world where arts engagement is recognized as transformative – connecting the individual with the self, the self with community, and communities with society. In this world, the power of arts engagement is available for all.

Since 2008, Path with Art has provided access to the arts and arts education for those who have arguably the greatest need and the least access. Before engaging with the arts, Student Artists report feeling invisible, shamed, and disrespected by society. Through Path with Art, students learn to trust themselves and others, develop new skills and habits for self-expression, explore problem-solving through art making, regain their sense of self and dignity, and build relationships.

WHO WE SERVE We serve low-to-no income adults in active recovery from domestic abuse, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and other trauma, who are working to rebuild their lives. Participants are referred to us by over 30 social service partners in the greater Seattle Area. Social service partners – ranging from low-income housing organizations, to overnight and daytime shelters, to psychiatric health providers, to senior centers – refer participants to Path with Art, knowing that the arts alleviate the isolation and marginalization our students experience in their daily lives.