A chocolate doughnut is today’s inspiration at Studio 105.
Sandwiched between two teaching artists at the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning’s new Glenville creative arts center, a sixth-grade boy is meticulously painting the sugary confection. Between laughs and questions, he makes a proclamation.
“We need more art!”
“We’re working on it,” chuckles one of his instructors, Center for Arts-Inspired Learning executive director Marsha Dobrzynski.
Studio 105 is the organization’s second location, an expansion that opened in October in the former Front Porch space and aims to reach students from the Glenville and Hough neighborhoods. The 2,200-square-foot facility continues the center’s 65-year mission of enhancing students’ leadership skills and academic confidence through arts programs and after-school clubs.
“The arts are a really powerful tool to engage young people in learning and take ownership of learning,” Dobrzynski says, “just to allow them to be expressive and creative, to feel that they are a part of the future.”
Studio 105 offers a bevy of new creative classes for children kindergarten through eighth grade. The center also works with local teachers to craft creative lesson plans in classes such as math and science. The Glenville addition comes after families had difficulty reaching the University Circle location.
“We’ve created a community of young people who didn’t know each other before,” says Dobrzynski. “Now they have peers who are interested in the same kinds of things.”
Studio 105’s opening comes after with the center’s summer launch of Makers and Mentors, free after-school apprenticeship clubs that make students the instructors. Teaching artists help high school students develop their own artistic projects. Those students then teach what they learn to middle schoolers, acting as mentors.
“You start to master an art form when you teach it,” says community outreach manager Caitlin Reilly.
Other classes include African drumming with Mama Fasi, one of the nation’s foremost female African percussionists, hip-hop production with producer Rafique Watson and resident teaching artist Kalim Hill and visual arts with Ryan Upp and Shelly Svonavec.
“We only opened here in October … and we’ve really seen kids who come alive here and have come back really engaged and really wanting to learn,” says Dobrzynski. “They take that enthusiasm for learning with them at home and then to school the next day.“
