Homeless Youth Get Creative

The Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis is trying to raise public awareness about the number of homeless youth in the Twin Cities through new interactive art installations called Home is Where You Make It. Created by artists-in-residence Lauri Lyons and Tish Jones, the project gives homeless youth a chance to develop and display their artwork to a broad audience.

Participating homeless teens have been attending artist-led workshops and been supported in the act of writing personal narratives and shooting black and white portraits. Those portraits have been enlarged and mounted onto cardboard, where they’ve been assembled into 5’ x 7’ ‘houses’ on the street.

What a creative way to bring attention to the problem of youth homelessness! I volunteered with homeless teens in New York City when I lived there, and I always believed that if people really knew there were so many homeless teens, they would be motivated to support programs that work to remedy the problem. I love that the Home Is Where You Make It installation makes it hard to ignore what’s really going on with homeless teens in the Minneapolis area.

The installations will be set up through August 21. For a complete schedule, visit the website.