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Volunteer artist-in-residence develops activities for mentoring matches

Volunteerism at its Finest: Creatively Engaging Matches in New Ways

This Fall Mentoring For Success has been fortunate to have a volunteer Artist-in-Residence, Kate Sweeney, working with our schools to develop engaging activities for mentoring matches.  Hailing from North East of England, Ms. Sweeney is a visual artist currently on sabbatical in San Francisco. She has exhibited and screened work in national galleries and international film and video festivals. Kate is a socially engaged artist who likes working with non artists and community groups to produce video and film work. Her interest is the issues and concerns of the people directly involved in the process, and she believes that her role is to draw out and construct stories, narrative and truth from everyday experiences.

Kate has developed group projects for our students and mentors to tell stories and learn more about one another through her “Message in a Bottle” activity which continues to be used by mentoring matches throughout the district to get to know one another better.

She has also engaged schools and the larger community in conversations about transformation and remembering loved ones through arts activities that culminated with an altar at The Marigold Project’s Day of the Dead celebration at Garfield Park in San Francisco.  Leading up to the event,  matches at Fairmount Elementary and Francisco Middle Schools decorated sugar skulls and Denman Middle School matches made flowers for the altar. Students from local Child Development Centers, Fairmount, Francisco, and Bryant Elementary School came out to the altar to honor their loved ones.

Most recently, leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, she developed projects in collaboration with students, mentors, Learning Support Professionals and Americorps Members to creatively recognize and reflect on the things we appreciate.   At Rosa Parks Elementary School mentors and their students build Gratitude Gardens  and at Buena Vista Horace Mann, middle school students worked with Ms. Sweeney to produce a song of thanks.

We are fortunate to have Ms. Sweeney work with Mentoring For Success this Fall and extend our gratitude to her for all of her work.

If you are an artist interested in working with Mentoring For Success please get in touch! We welcome your ideas to help engage our youth more deeply with their mentors. The Mentoring For Success Artist-in-Residence Program also gratefully accepts and acknowledges contributions for arts supplies. For more information or to volunteer, please contact Erin Farrell at 415-242-2615, or at FarrellE@sfusd.edu.