Art & Activism Teen Programs

Recent Projects

Access Ambassadors. Hampton Bays Senior Center. 2024. A series of workshops for the Southampton Town Youth Bureau’s Youth Advisory Council, empowering participants as advocates for the disability community, with an emphasis on ableism awareness.

Arts Administrators Apprenticeship Program. The Watermill Center. 2022. A partnership with the Hayground School (Bridgehampton, NY) and Peconic Community School (Cutchogue, NY) provided students the opportunity to work with local arts and cultural institutions and develop projects that expanded their skill set and contributed to the organization.

Social Justice Makers Series. The Watermill Center. 2023. The Social Justice Makers Series was an afterschool enrichment program for teens, enabling them to explore the intersection of art and activism by working with teaching artists to gain first-hand experience of implementing art as a tool for social change. Through weekly workshops over the course of two months, students worked with artists across a variety of disciplines, focusing on current social issues that were of special interest to the participants. The program used the work of The Center’s alumni artists as a framework for students to develop their projects.

Teens Program: Voice in Focus. Hampton Bays Library. 2023. A series of workshops teaching students how to reimagine their cell phone as an artistic tool, and use photography to explore and establish their voice. The project culminated in a public exhibition of large-scale prints throughout the library.

The Retreat: Teen Leaders. The Watermill Center. 2024. The Retreat (All Against Abuse): Teen Leaders program was engaged to explore the role of art in abuse-prevention advocacy. Participants explored the work of The Center’s roster of alumni artists to develop inspiration and look at how a diverse array of artists working across disciplines have interpreted social issues through creative practice. Students chose to explore dating violence prevention, and developed a project designed to raise awareness about the issue. Inspired by alumni Amy Khoshbin and her “Word On The Street’’ series, students researched the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and created protest banners using Khosbin’s approach.

Truthworker Theatre Partnership. The Watermill Center. 2022. A partnership between The Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center and Truthworker Theatre Company was developed to empower female BIPOC high-school students to tell their own stories through performance and dance. Students worked with theatre director Samara Gaev of For Freedoms to explore racial, gender, and economic justice and its role in their daily lives. During a masterclass with Gaev, students recounted their experiences existing as minorities in a highly stigmatized area, and developed those stories into short exploratory performance exercises.