ArtForce

ArtForce is a three-week summer program perfect for high school students interested in exploring the arts as a possible college and/or career options.

Summer Program for Teens


In 2014, leadership at Arts for Learning and Ivy Tech discovered a mutual interest in providing a unique summer arts experience for teens. The result is ArtForce, a three-week summer intensive visual arts program on the Central Indiana Ivy Tech campus that is co-taught by a professional teaching artist with Arts for Learning Indiana and a member of the Ivy Tech faculty.

The program also includes guest artists and speakers from both organizations and the broader Indianapolis arts community. All day Monday through Friday, students work on projects in a variety of art techniques. Students work both by themselves and collaboratively. They also have the opportunity to sit in on college level art classes. In addition, they go on a field trip to explore an Indianapolis arts venue.

All of the activities help students build their portfolios. They have opportunities to experience how art can be a career and an avocation. In addition, the group serves to create an arts micro-community. The summer ends with an exhibition featuring artwork that the students created.

A unique aspect of the program is that students receive a stipend upon completion of the summer based on their attendance and participation. And, throughout the rest of the year, Arts for Learning hires previous students to work at special events along with administrative staff, or with our professional teaching artists.

The theme for Summer 2023 was “Creative Entrepreneurship” and students used wood burning, paint, and printmaking to dig deep into their individual journeys. How do you define boundaries? What constitutes an immigration journey to you?  When you think of family, do you think of your blood relations or do you include valuable ties to friends and community? These are the questions they asked while creating their art.

Instructors Hector del Campo and Nasreen Khan used a variety of artistic mediums and techniques to translate transgressing and holding boundaries, into maps of the students’ lived experiences.

Application expected to be available in March 2024

Application Deadline: May 17, 2024

Summer 2024 Dates: tentatively June 10-28, 2024

ArtForce Summer Program Information

Click on the video to see our program in action. Then use the link below to register (applications go live in March each year).

“I knew the artists in ArtForce better than I knew my own classmates in high school, to the point that I can reach out to them to this day. Not only was it the community that impacted me, but it pushed me to pursue more with my art and understand how broad art can be rather than just drawing and painting. Thank you Arts for Learning for the wonderful opportunity to be a part of ArtForce.”

Kollin Miller, Former ArtForce Apprentice

Wall displaying multiple pieces of hand drawn and painted art

For more information about ArtForce, contact Angela Yetter at [email protected].

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