Summer Program for Teens
Application Deadline: Closed for 2024
Summer 2024 Dates: June 10-28, 2024
Application for 2025 available:
Who: Exiting 8-11th grade students in/near Indianapolis
When: June 2025
Applications open: April 1, 2025
Application deadline: May 19, 2025
Cost: $25. Scholarships may be available
Perks: art supplies, lunch provided daily, sneak peek at college-level art classes, local museum visits, stipend upon completion ($)
Summer 2024’s theme is “Life in Color.” Instructors Nasreen Khan and Colton Pedro will use a variety of artistic mediums and techniques to explore how art can help us celebrate, tap into joy, and explore our truths in this world that can seem so black, white, and shades of gray.
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.
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
For more information about ArtForce, contact Angela Yetter at [email protected].