Adults who have lost touch with their innate creativity can find personal growth and healing when they reconnect with that part of themselves in a nonjudgmental and encouraging environment. The chance to experience and create beauty is an essential element for human thriving. Making thoughtful art can allow a person to access an inner world that they may find difficult to express otherwise. The Art Chapel will be a place where these things can occur in the context of healthy, supportive community.

The Art Chapel will host art classes, group art projects, First Friday gatherings, and other public and private art events. We’ll offer classes at low cost, and a safe, welcoming place in which to work. Inviting experienced artists and makers from around the region to act as instructors will give people of the neighborhood access to role models and mentors. We’ll cooperate with local treatment centers to offer art opportunities for their residents. A dream is to connect with a licensed art therapist who could offer drop-in sessions at the studio.

The Art Chapel has the potential to reach across cultural, social, and language barriers and be a catalyst for flourishing in the south of downtown neighborhoods. It will be housed in the first church building to exist in our city, just north of the current F Street Neighborhood Church. Repurposing this building for a community art studio not only respects the structure’s original community-serving purpose, it also transforms a neglected space into an asset for a struggling neighborhood. The building itself becomes a work of art to enrich the neighborhood. In this way, we can give a gift to our community, “to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes” (Isaiah 61).