The Bronx's DreamYard Project: Over Twenty Years of Free Programs Changing Young Lives Through The Arts

Anyone who was at Central Park's Delacorte Theatre that late summer evening in 2014 surely remembers the magical moment when, as if it were the most natural decision to make in her young life, a little girl from the audience cheerfully ran onto the stage during a performance the Public Theatre's Public Works' musical production of THE WINTER'S TALE, and sat down with the young cast members she had been watching on stage.

Alizah Olivo was a seven-year-old in her second Public Works production when that happened and remembers trying to get closer to the little girl and take her into her group.

That inclusionary attitude is certainly nurtured by the DreamYard Project, the largest arts organization in the Bronx.

Ian Frazier of The New Yorker writes of how DreamYard is situated in the South Bronx building where Alizah lives with her parents and four siblings. Her dad, Nelson Olivo, a former dancer and a street musician took Alizah and one of her brothers to the audition when he saw a note in his building inviting community members to try out for Public Works' first production, THE TEMPEST. All three got in. The next year more Olivos joined their neighbors recruited by DreamYard to participate in what is now an annual Delacorte event.

The DreamYard Project was founded twenty-one years ago by two young actors, Jason Duchin and Tim Lord, to recruit teachers from among the working artists they knew and match them up with public schools whose funding for arts education had been cut. Today, DreamYard sponsors artists in forty-five Bronx schools teaching about ten thousand students.

Believing that art can save the world, DreamYard holds poetry contests between local kids and kids in other countries via Skype, makes posters for political protests, supplies art work for parks and other public spaces, holds acting workshops for adults, helps to paint designs on local apartment-building rooftops in heat-reflecting paint, and runs arts festivals.

Their programs are all free. Of the kids who participate long-term in the center's on-site programs, ninety-eight per cent graduate from high school and go on to college. In 2012, DreamYard won a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award as one of the best out-of-school arts programs in the country. Michelle Obama presented the award at the White House.

Twenty-three year old Ewin Velasquez of Baychester credits DreamYard for changing his life. After being transferred out of a high school where gangs beat up students regularly and police patrolled the halls, he started taking art classes at DreamYard, at first because a girl he liked was taking them, too. Finding he had a talent, he took more classes and eventually became art teacher Carla Repice's assistant. Among his assignments was to paint a large Bronx landscape for the building's parking lot.

He also met DreamYard's landlord, Peter Magistro, head of Bronx Pro Group, a real-estate management and development company. Magistro, a great believer in providing good low-income housing and in putting art works in buildings, wanted to make a park in an unused lot between two of his buildings and asked artists from DreamYard to design and decorate it. So they would have a sense of what he wanted, he took fifteen kids, including Velasquez, and five chaperons to Barcelona to see the modernist buildings and mosaics of Antoni Gaudí, and then on to Rome. After the trip, Velasquez contributed many Gaudí-inspired mosaics to the park, known as Hayden Lord Park.

After receiving a degree from City College, Velasquez applied to work at Bronx Pro, which immediately found a job for him. As assistant project manager, he does everything from polishing chandeliers to planning new property renovations. He wants to stay in the Bronx and build more affordable housing.

Click here for the full story on how the DreamYard Project is changing lives through arts education.

Visit dreamyard.com.

DreamYard collaborates with Bronx youth, families and schools to build pathways to equity and opportunity through the arts. DreamYard programs develop artistic voice, nurture young peoples' desire to make change and cultivate the skills necessary to reach positive goals. By committing to sustained learning opportunities along an educational pathway, DreamYard supports young people as they work toward higher learning, meaningful careers and social action.