Ragdale Youth Engagement is connecting creative professionals from around the world with local teachers and students.
At the core of this program are Ragdale’s fellowship artists and over 50 unique program offerings.
About Ragdale Youth Engagement
This free program makes the most of Ragdale’s vast network of art and design professionals as well as our historic 7-acre campus to provide an engaging retreat and “arts lab” for teachers and students. We match Ragdale Fellows and alumni with the needs of schools in a series of onsite and offsite programs that foster healthy self-expression, community engagement, cultural exchange, and career development. Available to all regional schools, with an emphasis on underserved communities in Lake County.
Teacher Retreats
Ragdale’s relationship with schools are built through an ongoing collaboration with teachers and faculty. These educators create unique opportunities for their students to discover personal connections to the arts by introducing them to our artists and their creative processes. As a way to support the important work of our teacher partners, Ragdale offers a special weekend retreat specifically designed for them to benefit from the time and space offered in an artist residency.
Student Workshops
Ragdale artists present talks, lead workshops, and discuss their professional careers to students from kindergarten through college level. School visits are arranged with teachers and unique programs are developed along with the artist to present topics connecting curricula to the artist’s work.
Featured Artist
This month’s featured artist is Ragdale alumni, Cristiane Mohallem. Cristiane is a Brazilian artist living in São Paulo. She received a degree in Clinical Psychology from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo in 2000. For seven years, she coordinated an art therapy program at Rim e Hipertensão Hospital, UNIFESP. This project led her to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a MAAT in 2008. There she discovered the world of visual arts and developed an especial interest in painting ateliers. In 2012 she held her first solo exhibition at the DConcept Gallery in São Paulo. Two years later, she stopped working as a psychotherapist to focus exclusively on her art studio work. Her visual works have been exhibited in Brazil, the United States, Germany, and Italy.
Featured Program
Arts + Nature
The Arts & Nature program makes the most of Ragdale’s 5-acre campus and its unique relationship with the Shaw Prairie to provide an open-air “art lab” inspired by and directly connected to the natural environment.
Arts + Nature with Guillermo Delgado - Episode 2: Haiku + Poetry
Arts + Nature
Episode 1: Papermaking with Melissa Jay Craig
Ragdale alumnus and multidisciplinary artist, Melissa Jay Craig, leads viewers on how to make paper from milkweed grown in her Chicago garden.