Ufikile: You've Arrived
Posted December 1, 2011
Lesley College students who traveled to South Africa exhibited their art, along with art from South African women artists.
Cambridge, Mass. — During spring break last March, a group of 14 Lesley College students and two faculty members piloted the first service-learning trip to South Africa, called “Art, Healing, and Community in South Africa.”
The group was hosted by Art Aids Art, an organization founded in 2003 by educators and human service professionals dedicated to promoting education and sustainable economic development through traditional art forms such as beading, weaving, printmaking and fabric arts.
After the students returned from the service trip, they translated the experience into stories, poems, painting, bookmaking, collage and mixed media - continuing to reflect on the unforgettable week that hopes to be a first step toward an ongoing academic and cultural partnership between Lesley University and South Africa.
The students’ art - along with original art from South African women artists working through Art Aids Art - was assembled for a dazzling exhibit earlier this fall in Marran Gallery on Doble Campus, marking the first exhibit of Lesley’s academic year.
Journey to South Africa
The Lesley students who participated in the service trip represented Art and Expressive Art Therapies, Global Studies, Communication, Holistic Psychology and Counseling majors. Lesley faculty members Jane Richardson and Nancy Jo Cardillo led the course, which focused on the arts, healing, and community. Excursions during their week in South Africa included: direct service in the township of Khayelitsha; a boat ride to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned; trips to the unique ecosystems of Table Mountain and The Cape of Good Hope; and False Bay coast, home to endangered penguins.
The students said each experience awakened their senses and stirred their emotions in different ways, but it was the women and children of Philani Nutrition Center and eKhaya eKasi that the students asked to return to. There, they experienced Ubuntu, “I am because you are,” described by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as “The essence of what it is to be human.”