d’Arte Board

Ah heck, I dunno why but I don’t feel like posting more painting updates here right now–maybe later. This is something else I’ve been spending lots of time working on lately.  KPAO! (say it KAPOW!) stands for Kennedy Park Arts Outreach.  I made that up–so clever, huh?

Kennedy Park is just around the corner from my house.  It’s a popular hangout for kids, especially teens, many of whom don’t really have anywhere else to chill with their friends.  I go there sometimes, too.  I like to swing and climb on the play structures.  No, you’re never too old to play… well, not until your heart dies and shrivels up into a brittle stone, and I’m not that old yet.

So last fall right around election time there was a big fat controversy surrounding Kennedy Park and the menacing teens who hung out there.  I only found out because many of the evil chitluns also spend a great deal of time at my house.  They started showing up here all upset because the cops had kicked them out of the park again.  Then, there was a proposed ordinance to arrest anyone over the age of 14 caught using the play structures.  All this supposedly because there had been some vandalism and obnoxious behavior, and because random people were showing up late at night at the park and acting like idiots with no volume control.  Right so, I didn’t care for this version of “problem solving”.  At a friend’s excellent suggestion, I threw together a grant proposal and KPAO! was born.

KPAO! is me and my partner and some wonderful neighbors and the kids making art and organizing an arts and crafts festival in the park. Turns out, the other side to these occasionally ill-mannered teens is super creative and extremely talented. Who knew? Well, I did via Sunday Sidewalk Doodles.  If you’d like to see what we’ve been up to, we have a KPAO! Facebook page and a blog called I Heart Kennedy Park.  They’re both still a bit sparse, but will continue to be updated as things progress. Yeah so, check it out and cheer us on and stuff. Some of this gets a little overwhelming so hearing friendly support from the sidelines every now and then is a nice boost.

Thanks for listening!
-Steph

CLick to see KPAO! on Facebook.

This entry was posted on June 19, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Stephanie Gerolimatos with tags Art, Arts, crafts, festival, KPAO!, party, stephg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.