CDPY is focus … focusing attention on detail
Our Creative Design Project for Youth (CDPY) nurtures the talent of creative and undeserved Title I, secondary, Miami-Dade County Public Schools students aspiring to enter top art and design programs at established universities.
CDPY embraces a holistic approach to education. The program, directed by intermedia artist, educator and designer Rene Barge — 2010 Nobel Educator of Distinction — seeks to enhance the knowledge, proficiency and competitiveness of art and design students by engaging them in real-world experiences that augment their proficiencies and portfolios with exhibited, published original works commissioned by partnering community programs and arts organizations.
CDPY was established in the Fall of 2005 with an Access To Artistic Excellence grant from the NEA’s Media Arts Program. From the start, CDPY has offered participants access to the artistic process by working directly with professional artist/mentors creating new work at our intermedia art and design studio, iSAW. Mentors involve the students in the making of proposed projects from the conceptual stage, to the presentation of the work in local art spaces, cultural venues and publications.
Today, CDPY offers M-DCPS students Executive Internships, Externships and Summer Art Residencies. Our Executive Interns receive an additional credit toward graduation and may receive college proficiency credit through articulation agreements with accredited colleges and universities in the State of Florida. They are also eligible for Florida’s Bright Futures/Gold Seal Scholarships.
Our students have been admitted to prestigious art and design programs at Ringling College of Art and Design, CalArts and The Art Institute of Chicago, based on the quality of their work for CDPY.
Publishing students in CDPY offers young adults a persistent connection with both education and employment that equips them with credentials needed to be effective participants in a creative society. Evidence of the effectiveness of these strategies are the published works themselves, but, most importantly, the success of our executive intern students in obtaining admission in top art and design programs nationwide.
M-DCPS Typographic Distinction Award
To date, some of our executive interns have been accepted to creative design programs at schools such as Cal Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Ringling College of Art and Design … their portfolios showed published designs such as the one below by our 2011-12 executive intern student Stacey D’Andelet, who designed it for the upcoming performance by FM during Sleepless Night 2011.
2011-12 CDPY Executive Intern Stacey D’Andelet
In the words of CDPY’s Art Director Rene Barge: Stacey D’Andelet began her executive CDPY internship with me during her 2010 sophomore year. Since then, she has collaborated on several community-specific visual design projects to promote programing for SFCA [iSAW + Subtropics]. In addition to her experience processing imagery and typography, Stacey D’Andelet is working within the development of morewaysoflistening.org a site dedicated to adventurous intermedia, teacher + student, collaborations. More Ways of Listening is projected to launch January 2012 . At the present, Stacey DAndelet is a junior. Finally, Stacey will also be involved in the SFCA [iSAW + Subtropics] Listening Gallery’s multi-media promotional material. By the time she graduates high school, her work as well as the work of other high school CDPY interns, will be published to an international audience in the millions.
Testimonial:
The window project was meant to be a project that would contrast the type that you see every day. For instance, instead of reading a precise, uniform computer font that kept everything neat and readily legible, hand drawn type allows one to read the personality of the type, giving one three ways of looking at the type: 1.) What the type reads, 2.) The general feeling that the type itself gives off, and 3.) The feeling given when the two meanings are combined. My bamboo type, for example, may resonate the idea of listening to the everyday sounds of nature on a more simple and relaxed scale than Mr. Barge’s wild, electric type. – Stacey D’Andelet