Glen Arbor Arts Center and LIFT team up kids with art

Christian Feeney, 13 and a rising eighth grader at Glen Lake Middle School, throws pottery at the Glen Arbor Arts Center Pottery Studio at Thoreson Farm in Port Oneida. Photo by Kristie McCaw / GAAC.

By Ross Boissoneau

Sun contributor

If it’s July, then it must be time for art projects for Glen Lake middle schoolers. Same for August. And September, October—you get the idea.

Thanks to a partnership between the Glen Arbor Arts Center and Leelanau Investing For Teens—the Suttons Bay-based center for after-school activities commonly known by its acronym LIFT—each month the art center offers a class for students from Glen Lake Middle School.

The partnership started in April 2024 and programs will continue through April 2025, or until all 12 classes are fulfilled, though both GAAC and LIFT are hopeful additional funding will allow it to continue. The initial costs for the program were underwritten by the Glen Lake Women’s Club. “The Glen Lake Women’s Club approached Glen Arbor Arts to fund art classes for middle school students,” says Emily Worden, program development director for LIFT. When asked if LIFT would be interested in being involved, the response was an immediate “Yes.”

The partnership allows for 8-12 students per month to attend an art class, with transportation covered by LIFT and art programming provided by GAAC. The classes take place at the art center in Glen Arbor or at Thoreson Farm. Classes so far have included gelli printing, Suminagashi marbling, charcoal drawing, and pottery wheel throwing.

Worden says the summer programming is just as valuable as the after-school program, if not more so. “Summer is harder for some of them,” Worden says, as the students lack the structure of the school year and often don’t see their friends. The summer sessions are open to any incoming students who will be in grades 6-12 in the coming school year who are living in Leelanau County, even if it’s just for the summer. It offers a chance to get together with friends and make new ones.

Plus, it’s fun. “It lets kids be kids, be creative with their friends.”

Kristie McCaw, the program manager at GAAC, concurs. “I think they really enjoy it,” she says. And she believes it goes even deeper. She says at one session, after the students were finished with their project, the instructor asked them if they would do friendly art critiques of one another. That allowed them to have their work taken seriously by their peers in a non-judgmental way.

That’s something Worden says is invaluable. Giving kids a space in which to be creative without any pressure or criticism can be hard to come by.

Both hope the program continues when the current funding expires in the spring, though they are unsure at this time whether that means approaching the Glen Lake Women’s Club again or seeking other funding avenues.

Editor’s note: Our July 25 print edition misspelled Christian Feeney’s first name. We regret the error.