COVID-19 Update

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ART 180 is closed for the time being. Our staff is working from home except for stopping by to check on mail and the office. With public schools beginning the semester remotely, we will offer our programs online as well.

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We are doing well, staying productive, and remaining positive. We’re staying in touch daily, Zooming as a full staff, as leadership, program and operations teams, and with our board. We’re taking care of business, taking care of our staff and artists, keeping an eye on cashflow, feeling super grateful for what we have, and thinking about our young folks. Life is certainly different, surreal and at times unreal, stretching us and challenging us in countless ways. Life is weird, but life is good.

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What can you do, you ask?

 

We need you more than ever. Follow us, connect with us, keep us in your hearts and head. And here's another thing you can do: engage with our young people and our artists for yourself. Send a poem, piece of art, quote, or other words of encouragement to our teen leaders or artist program leaders. Do it! Email it to 180@art180.org and we’ll forward it along (and, if you say it's okay, we'll share it on social).

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“If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can't imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America's alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart – and then to discover that one is not alone in one's feelings.” 

 

– Rita Dove, former U.S. Poet Laureate

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