Our philosophy, based on our years of research, experience and evaluation, can be summed up in the diagram above. This means that within every class–with every interaction with children–all artist teachers, assistants, therapists and volunteers intentionally work with children, their families and their communities through:
1. Three basic goals - Facilitating
Hope: Having a future orientation
Healing: Gaining holistic well-being
Resilience: Acquiring and using both internal and external resources to bounce back form adversity
2. A method characterized by four central concepts
Person-Centered: Placing the needs of the participant before other considerations and providing age-appropriate services and "meeting" the participant where "they" are.
Hope-Infused: Helping participants (children, families and communities) develop will-power and way-power in discovering a future vision for themselves and finding a path to accomplish it.
Trauma-Informed: Informed and sensitive to the neurological, biological, psychological, and social effects of trauma and violence on children
Arts-Integrated: Creating and making-art as a method or way to teach non-art subjects, especially life skills
3. The BuildaBridge Classroom^TM/ Child-Safe-Spaces is our model used to engage and interact with children and communities. It includes the following elements:
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Ritual
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Art as metaphor
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Creating a safe environment with boundaries of space and behavior to create a safe place
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Speaking Blessings/Praise/Affirmations
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Holistic development that includes academic, social, artistic, and spiritual aspects
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The Creative Artist/trained trauma-aware facilitator
COre Philosophy
CORE VALUES
Person-Focused & Arts-Integrated
Our two primary goals of engaging participants through teaching (teaching subjects by integrating the arts) and healing (healing through the therapeutic power of the arts). Work is to be centered on the needs of the child and not those of one’s artistic ideals.
Restorative Purposes
Restorative art helps people understand a critical awareness of self and the world; improve quality of sense of awe, wonder and a sense of reality; and provide a sense of purpose to help the world.
Contextual
Our work is contextual. The arts are most effective when the context is considered and the constituency is involved in their (the arts) creation.
Holistic Restorative Transformation
Our work is focused on holistic restorative transformation (organic). The goal of transformation is to attain peace, justice, well-being, restoration, a new vision for life–holistically in the spiritual, social, economic, emotional, physical, and political lives of people, communities and societies.
Collaborative
The power of art-making to create change is in the relationship between the artist and the participant. Art created in relationship with others bridges barriers, provides an open and trusting environment for expression and helps build community.
Holistic
We focus on four objective in our work: artistic excellence, academic improvement, social development, and character/spiritual maturity.
Purposeful & Intentional
Employing the arts is intentional. We design specific outcomes hat lead to the restoration of broken and impoverished individuals & communities. All BaB artists thoughtfully write outcomes-focused curricula and projects and assess their work.
Speaking Blessings
We define a blessing (a universal principle of good will and giving honor) as speaking and teaching hope and healing through words of truth & admiration, meaningful touch and commitment to the relationship.