Our Redeemer Lutheran School’s Art program is very committed to celebrating cultural diversity.  Recently the students completed a special project based on the very inspiring story of artist Tyree Guyton, who has, over the past thirty years, turned his economically challenged neighborhood in Detroit into an incredible outdoor art gallery.  This renovation is called “The Heidelberg Project”.

ORLS Art teacher, Ema Johnson, described her adaptation to the project this way:

“In class, we talked about what you can do to change a difficult situation when it looks like you don't have any tool available except for your creativity.  We basically did what Mr. Guyton did: we used trash to make something beautiful and worked all together in a friendly way. All classes loved this project, some asked me to do this every week (!), but the sixth graders particularly were blown away by it and had many questions. So I decided to reach out to Mr. Guyton and see if he could answer some written questions by email. A member of the museum's staff immediately answered me the next day saying:  ‘We are so happy to hear that you and your students were inspired by Tyree's work all the way in Dallas! Stories like yours are the reason we do what we do.’” 

And an artistic relationship was born!  Here are some pictures from the Detroit project as well as from the students at ORLS.