RSVP is a new program that introduces the arts to recently arrived unaccompanied immigrant children seeking humanitarian protection as an acculturative path-marking experience in New York City. RSVP is in partnership with Terra Firma as part of our youth enrichment services. Aligning with leading cultural institutions, organizations, artists, and businesses throughout New York City—RSVP introduces how the arts are foundational to all New Yorkers in making it their home, and most importantly for recently arrived unaccompanied immigrant children.

 

For RSVP’s pilot program, participants experience the arts through a combination of weekly field visits throughout the city that are complimented by hands-on workshops where the participants engage in exercises to map (using a variety of materials and mediums that include: videos/photos/drawings/ writing/music) and reflect on what they did, what they want to do, and who they want to be in their new home — New York City. Areas of the arts include: Art, Architecture, Music, Film, Writing, and Performance/Theater. Examples of the partnering organizations for the field visits include: Diller, Scofidio + Renfro / Architecture, National Sawdust / Music, and Times Square Arts/Performance and Theater, etc. A key component of the field visits is that the children engage in related activities of ‘making and doing’ while at these sites of cultural production. Mapping exercises incorporate the places and activities that the youth identify as making New York City a home for them, as well as becoming a guide to ‘their NYC’.

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RSVP is funded in part by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund through the foundation’s Arts & Mental Health initiative.