SI believes that contemporary art can provide a platform for self-exploration, discovery, and creative risk taking for young adults. SI Teen programs provide a safe space to grow individually and collectively, and to make meaningful artwork and teen-centered programs together.
Past program topics have included: the art of wandering, rituals and magic, the artistic processes of making/doing/thinking, the architecture of education, time based media, site specific artworks, posters as artworks, environmental relationships, and more.
Launched in 2019, SI’s Teen programs invite students from NYC’s high-schools to participate in after-school sessions, whether in our self-directed Teen Council, our exploratory Teen Classes , or our summer intensive in partnership with NYC’s Department of Youth And Community Development. All participants are paid for class hours. Please find more information below, including how to apply.
SI TEEN CLASS
SI’s weekly after-school teen classes are a paid ($16/hr) program during the school year for teenagers 15-18 years old. Each of SI’s teen classes are centered around a theme related to contemporary art, with lectures and discussions, close looking activities, art making, and individual and collaborative projects inspired by the theme.
Fall 2024 – Spring 2025: What’s now? / What now?
The ways we experience, define, and create the now, the contemporary, today, this current moment are vast and unwieldy. In this class we will use contemporary art to question our linear/fixed experience of time and think together towards understandings of time that are expansive, fluid, looping, unstable and continuously unfolding.
What can we learn from the ways the past saw the future? And what can we learn from the ways the future may look back at the past? We will use concepts of a speculative future as well as a speculative past to find ways of seeing the past, present and future simultaneously.
Our inquiries will begin with Energies at Swiss Institute and grow to encompass broader critical frameworks across geographies and mediums to consider: How are contemporary artists negotiating and articulating the ongoing and interwoven impacts of colonialism and ecological crisis?
Together, we will imagine a present (What’s now?) brimming with potential and liberation (What now?) and create visions of what a future informed by many histories could look like.
Weekly classes will involve discussions, art making, and deep exploration into artistic practices. We will tour Swiss Institute’s current exhibitions, go on trips to other arts and culture spaces, and meet guest artists who will share their journey and process with us.
Classes will meet on select Tuesdays, 4:30pm-6:30pm for 15 sessions between October 22, 2024 and April 8, 2025.
Applications are now closed. Please check back again late summer for the new season’s application.
SI TEEN COUNCIL
Swiss Institute Teen Council (SITC) is a paid ($16/hr) opportunity for teens of all backgrounds (ages 16-21 years old) to share their ideas, explore leadership and collaboration, and create original content centered on a teen and young adult audience. With the support of SI as our home base, SITC members can manifest shared ideas and bring them to life. SITC provides a safe space to grow individually and collectively, and to provide an environment to make meaningful work together.
SITC’s goals include: planning events and programs centered around a teen and young adult audience, fostering a creative environment and engage with the arts, including the visual and performing arts, design, and architecture, playing an advising role in future SI teen and young adult programs, and creating opportunities for SITC members to grow professional skills to help with future endeavors in various career paths.
*Teen Council gives priority to former participants of SI’s teen programs, but all are welcome to apply. Additionally, young people are welcome to apply to and participate in both Teen Class and Teen Council for the same season if accepted.
SITC will meet on select Thursdays, 4:30pm-6:30pm for 15 sessions between October 17, 2024 and April 3, 2025.
Applications are now closed. Please check back again late summer for the new season’s application.
SI TEEN SUMMER
SI’s summer teen program is presented in partnership with NYC’s Department of Youth And Community Development’s (DYCD) Summer Internship Program. This program is a paid opportunity offered to juniors and seniors in DYCD’s program, and aimed to foster career-readiness and exposure to contemporary art institutions and art professions. Students gain exposure by visiting art institutions around the NYC area, meeting with a variety of arts professionals, and participate in workshops designed by guest artists. Throughout the summer, students create independent and collaborating projects around a program theme.
Please email education(at)swissinstitute(dot)net with questions about any of our teen program offerings.