My first experience with A.W.E, actually teaching and interacting with children, was at the Summerfest tent. I assumed that this was mostly what the Truck Studio program was like: kids swarming for a chance to do crafts, coming and going as quickly as they could, groups descending just as quickly as one could cut paper and organize supplies.
Boy, was I wrong.
Compared to Summerfest, the Truck Studio program is an entirely different world, as I learned at my first experience with it at the final Truck Studio stop for the summer.
My first thought upon walking into the park was that I was amazed and slightly stunned by the array of languages that were flooding my ears from the group of picnic tables outside of the truck. I could only half-heartedly begin to comprehend the Spanish, as my K-12 education was spent in the relentless and fruitless pursuit of Latin, and I couldn’t fathom some of the other languages being spoken. The amazing thing was, though, that despite cultural differences, everyone was connected through the mutual bond of art making: in this case, crafting their very own Ugly Dolls which, by the end of the project, the kids refused to let go of as they ran about the park.
As I meandered through the groups of families, friends, neighbors, and strangers, through piles upon piles of craft supplies, listening to the constant hum of art making that suddenly made the languages still unfamiliar to me completely understandable, there was one language that I could not get over: one of the many dialects of Burma spoken by a family who immigrated to Milwaukee from the far distant country.
For those of you unfamiliar, Burma – or the Republic of the Union of Myanmar – is a small Asian nation to the southeast of India. Like so many countries, it was a victim of colonialism, and once it gained its independence in 1948, it was struck by a series of social and economic consequences that plunged it into one of the world’s longest running civil wars. Some might remember the 2007 uprisings of the monks of Myanmar against the mili
tary junta; though that story faded from our media, the fighting did not.
The constant battles have driven much of the population of Burma to neighboring countries as a means to escape, and the families at my first Truck Studio were some of them. Burma is a country of many ethnic groups, and they represented some of the Karen people. They had escaped Burma to spend several years in Thai refugee camps before making the trek to America, where they were lucky enough to land in Milwaukee in the hands of a very caring landlord.
Their landlord, noticing that his residents had very little contact outside of their families during the summer months, sought to get them involved in the community. He made a call to Artists Working in Education to find the Truck Studio park that might be accessible to them, but not finding one, elected to drive them to the parks himself. There the children found an outlet of expression for lives that they found hard to communicate in their new English-speaking community: they could make art about where they came from, and with their parents, talk about what they were making.
The landlord even went so far as to get in touch with a translator, and it was through him that I spoke to several of the boys who came to the last Truck Studio to draw while some of their extended family (all younger members) worked at making the adorably silly Ugly Dolls. With colored pencils and pastels, they painted eloquently simple pictures of Thailand: beautiful jungle scenery that made up much of their early memories.
When they had enough of drawing, they ran off to play in the park with some of the other children.
“It’s a nice space to just let kids be kids,” their landlord commented. “They need that.”
I watched for a moment the comfortable, easy environment that had come from the coming together of the community over something so simple as art making. I did not have long to watch the quiet, however, before one of the Truck Studio artists produced a bucket of faux fur and the scene dissolved into something reminiscent of the Summerfest tent.
If there is one thing to be learned from my Truck Studio experience, it’s that kids love faux fur.
BY COURTNEY MORGAN, A.W.E WRITING INTERN
A.W.E. is proud to announce that we have been invited as the recipient organization for the Nourishing Arts-Autumn Vibrations gala on Nov 5. Please join us if you can!
