CCA News
El Salvador to Guatemala: Community Arts Model Replicated
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010, by Jason Engelund
The School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin is a community-based, collaborative art project created in El Salvador that is now expanding to Guatemala, Columbia, and Canada.
Established by Claudia Bernardi, the organization has been using the arts to facilitate healing and diplomacy in Perquin, El Salvador, a community torn apart by 12 years of civil war. Now with support from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the Ford Foundation, the Potrero Nuevo Fund, the San Carlos Foundation and Intersection for the Arts, the its model is being replicated to help victims of political violence in Guatemala, Columbia, and Canada.
This summer Claudia Bernardi, an internationally renowned artist, activist, and CCA faculty member, along with four local Salvadoran artists and teachers, are applying their successful practices from Perquin in the neighboring country of Guatemala. The 1960-96 armed conflict there was particularly brutal for indigenous communities. Claudia and her fellow art teachers are collaborating with the Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial (ECAP) (Community Studies Team of Psychosocial Action) and people in the community to create art and murals based around memories of the victims of the 1978 massacre at Panzos, Alta Verapaz.
It was a priest who initially asked Claudia to paint a mural in Perquin in 1992. At the time she was assisting the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team in El Mozote, a town nearby, in creating archeological maps of the exhumation of hundreds of children and adults who were killed by military troops in a 1981 massacre. In 2001, after having painted many murals, often on walls still scarred and full of bullets, Claudia was asked by the mayor of Perquin to open a school. Walls of Hope, and the School of Art and Open Studio, began.
Claudia's team of artist apprentices have been leading transformative art projects for the people in Perquin. They have also enlisted other artists to visit the town and work at the school and studio. Center Student Grant awardees have completed numerous projects in the town involving oral histories, book making, mural painting, printmaking, design, and implementation of recycling receptacles. CCA students have also been a part of the school and open studio through Claudia's summer study abroad course here at CCA. Artists in residence from the United States and Japan have taught classes and conducted community arts projects through the school.
Walls of Hope: Guatemala is supported in part by the Ford Foundation through a grant from the NALAC Transnational Cultural Remittances Grant Program.
For more information please visit www.wallsofhope.org
Also see:
CCA Diversity Conference Highlights Community-Based Social Justice as Key
Community Arts Professor Claudia Bernardi Wins Major Grant from NALAC
Claudia Bernardi Wins IBAVI's 2009-10 Sustainable Visions and Values Award