Kids gathered in the Orange Gym at Martin Luther King School, where there were different stations set up to let them make art, from spray painting to chalk transfer to scribbling.
At one, a small group of kids squirted paint from tubes onto canvases. Volunteers handed them hard wide-toothed combs and plastic cutouts, then held their hands to show how the comb moved, then let the kids make their own strokes. The children giggled as the paint mixed together in thin streaks with small shapes outlined in different colors.
At the kaleidoscope table, students poured paint onto a sheet of paper they then folded and put on the table. Then they smashed it with their hands, spreading the paint. They opened it to reveal a collage of different colors and shapes.
All of these students are on the autism spectrum or have other disabilities, and they came to the MLK School to engage in UnrulyArt, a program that provides students with cognitive and motor challenges the ability to create art. The yearly event is part of collaboration between MIT’s Simons Center for the Social Brain and Cambridge Public Schools.
This year, 51 students assembled in the gym to experience different arts, with the goal of including children across all skill levels in the process of creating art. Art stations are run by volunteers, who are PhD and postdoctoral students at MIT. The event gets them out of the lab and into the field to interact with children with the disabilities they are studying. “It’s been really rewarding to see kids experience the arts,” said Kateryna Panikhina, a summer research student at MIT.
“As a community, everyone really loves this event,” said Evan Ruesch, a PhD student at MIT. Ruesch is the volunteer in charge of the kaleidoscope station, which requires the groups of students to work together on their art.
“Seeing how the kids collaborate and work together as a team is really fun,” Ruesch said
Art helps expression
UnrulyArt started in New Delhi, India in 2012 with Pawan Sinha’s nonprofit, Project Prakash, which helps blind children see again. The Project Prakash team had noticed that blind students tended to be quiet and reserved. Sinha and a majority of his team members were interested in the arts and wanted to see if art would help these children come out of their shells. They gave students different art techniques to try and found that it was a great way for them to learn to express themselves.
“It tells us just how much joy there is in being unconstrained in your creativity,” Sinha said.
With the event’s success in India, Sinha, who is a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, decided to bring UnrulyArt to the Boston area in November 2012. It now runs out of the Simons Center. In the U.S., its focus has shifted to students with brain disabilities rather than blindness. Over the years, the art stations at the event have changed, to give students variety in the activities. All the stations create new and different pieces, unique to each child.
Even after doing this for 14 years, Sinha is never disappointed when he watches the students smear paint across a canvas or create scribbles on a sheet of paper. Like the other researchers and volunteers involved with UnrulyArts, Sinha loves watching the way each child’s face lights up when they see what they’ve made. “Just being able to bring that little period of joy is the most meaningful part of it.”
This story is part of a partnership between Cambridge Day and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
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