20 Years of Creativity, Community, and Healing with LMU’s Summer Arts Workshop

This summer marked twenty years of LMU's Summer Arts Workshop (SAW), an art-therapy based program for underserved youth and their families, run through the Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic. Since the workshop's launch, it has touched the lives of over 500 children and families.

"The workshop is a community that continues to teach and transform me alongside everyone else who is part of it each year," Amber Cromwell, SAW director, said.

Though the workshop itself lasts a week, those involved often find lifelong community through the program. "Over the years, we've had the privilege of watching participants grow from middle school students to high school graduates, head off to college, and eventually return to visit-or even help facilitate the program themselves," says Jessica Bianchi, director of the Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic. Mikey Sanchez, a junior engineering major at LMU, first enrolled in the program in fifth grade. He is now a member of the leadership team, guiding his younger brother Matthew through the program.

Cromwell began her involvement with SAW as an undergraduate. "Terry Lenihan recommended me to serve as a senior mentor in the program, which completely changed the trajectory of my career," remembers Cromwell. "Seeing the power of creativity, mentorship, and community firsthand inspired me to pursue a graduate degree in art therapy," she says. After graduating, Cromwell became assistant director of the program, and she has now held the role of director for five years.

"We have built a rich foundation of scholarly research, which time and again points to mentorship and relationship-building as the heart of the SAW experience," Cromwell states. "SAW embraces reverse mentorship, the idea that learning is reciprocal and that meaningful leadership requires listening as much as teaching - some of my greatest teachers have been the young people who participate in the workshop," she explains.

This summer, SAW leaders celebrate the importance of reciprocal relationships in community, and the long-lasting sense of belonging they can create, through the workshop's theme: "Sacred Spaces: Celebrating Community, Light, and Resilience." Over the course of the week-long workshop, participants created a collaborative art piece centered around this theme. Each student created a stain-glass-like panel through textiles that vary in transparency, color, and texture. The panels were installed together in a large, lit window frame.

"This theme grew out of conversations about how we wanted to shift the focus to how healing and well-being happen through relationships and community," says Cromwell. "Like light brings together colors in a stained-glass window, we hope students saw how our individual experiences can come together to create something beautiful, meaningful, and stronger than any one person could create alone," she concludes.

Over the course of his fourteen years at LMU, Dr. Bryant Keith Alexander, dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts, has taken the opportunity to attend the closing exhibition of this program every year, missing only one due to a professional trip. "The program is remarkable because it assists and engages young people in finding their voice through creative expression. This with each student often standing near their art and explaining both process and intent to a circulating audience of viewers. Sometimes to their family and friends, and other times to invited guests and donors. And while the art is always brilliant, young people practicing their voice, and articulating aspects of their lived experience - in their own processes of being and becoming, is overwhelmingly beautiful," Dean Alexander says.

"This year in celebrating the 20^th Anniversary, the program leadership also celebrated the inspiration of Barbara Busse, former dean, College of Communication and Fine Arts in beginning the arts pro bono program. And because many of these students are from Delores Mission School, with a history of the program serving this population, we had the pleasure of having Fr. Brendan P. Busse, S.J., son of Barbara and Jay Busse both former LMU professors present. He spoke beautifully about the importance of this program for his students. And I had the pleasure of celebrating his mother's legacy in this and other signature CFA programs. Father Mike Engh, S.J. and university Chancellor was also present for the closing event," Dean Alexander notes.