nothin Yalies FOCUS On Bregamos | New Haven Independent

Yalies FOCUS On Bregamos

DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO

FOCUS team member Haley Moller performs community service at Bregamos Community Theater.

Amid the throngs of Yalies filling downtown streets is a growing force of students who make it a priority to venture beyond the university bubble for active engagement and community service across the Elm City.

The students are part of a program called FOCUS on New Haven, an acronym that stands for Focusing Our Conscious Urban Service, a primarily student-run program under the auspices of Dwight Hall at Yale, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 1886. Students engage in four days of volunteer work for four to six hours during the week prior to orientation before the academic year starts, and are exposed to featured speakers from New Haven government with additional educational and enrichment opportunities that include movies, readings, group discussions and introduction to social justice and activist groups in New Haven and on campus. The week of service is capped off with a student-organized dinner for participants and program supporters with an opportunity for FOCUS teams to report on their volunteer projects.

FOCUS team at Common Ground.

Some of the organizations served by FOCUS teams in New Haven this year included Common Ground High School, Food in Service to the Homebound (Fish), Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen Pantry, New Haven Farms, Amistad Catholic Worker …

FOCUS team at Bregamos with 1 of 4 painted panels.

…and Bregamos Community Theater where, as volunteer arts facilitator, I had the pleasure of working with and directing a group of FOCUS on New Haven volunteers for the second consecutive year.

Ramos, center, with FOCUS team and new graphic panel.

While Bregamos is technically a theater, its role in the community is much broader; a kind of de facto community center serving a variety of cultural and social needs for the greater Fair Haven and New Haven communities. Bregamos’s founder and executive director, Rafael Ramos, himself a volunteer, is on a steady trajectory of making improvements to the nonprofit theater despite a shoestring budget.

The handiwork of the 2017 FOCUS team at Bregamos.

In 2017, five FOCUS on New Haven volunteers worked to paint a new exterior sign for Bregamos, a design featuring the theater’s multicultural logo.

Left to right, Crawford, Ren, Choi, Wilcox, Moller, Chang, Martinez.

One of those students, Bryce Crawford, a junior who is also a midshipman in the Navy, returned this year as co-group leader (with Juan Otoya Vanini) — a total of 8 FOCUS volunteers. Along with the increase of volunteers came a more ambitious goal of painting 4 large graphic panels; images depicting actual events at the theater that will enliven the theater’s industrial exterior located at a back lot of Erector Square in Fair Haven. FOCUS team volunteers included Yale freshmen Amy Ren, Haley Moller, Isaiah Martinez, Jisoo Choi, Maya Wilcox and Sebastian Chang.

One of the group’s first tasks at Bregamos was to clear chairs to set up painting work stations. It didn’t take long for team members to spy an old upright piano and launch into some early team-building with a musical warm-up: City of Stars” from the La La Land movie played by Isaiah Martinez. 

Throughout the work-week, students took turns sharing their music predilections over a single micro speaker. The classical music of Rachmaninoff, favored by Sebastian Chang, was followed by a round of robust country ballads from Texas-based student, Isaiah Martinez, a forth generation Mexican-American who said he identifies simply as Texan. Bridging geographical and musical preferences was some of the hip-hop/rap music of the award-winning Hamilton musical. Everyone knew the lyrics and sang joyfully along.

Priming panels.

After an overview of project goals, work began in earnest. Four-by-eight foot wood panels were set up on the exterior covered dock, primed and left to dry.

It was an ideal time to take a tour of Erector Square, visit artists’ studios and learn about the upcoming Artspace sponsored, City Wide Open Studios Weekend (Oct. 28) at the massive complex; an event that draws thousands of visitors to the former Erector toy factory turned artists’ hub.

Visiting Erector Square Potters.

Erector Square Potters welcomed FOCUS volunteers in the pottery studio, sharing information about glazing and firing processes.

Karen Hibbs explains use of materials.

Equally welcoming were the principals of Hibbs Art Glass, a stained glass studio whose incredible glass panels artfully integrate fossils, minerals and found objects into compositions of texture, light and color. The tour concluded with a visit to the Dexterity Press studio featuring graphics printed on vintage presses, and a visit to Collective Consciousness Theater, one of three theaters operating at Erector Square.

Photo projections are traced.

Back at Bregamos, the process of creating illustrated panels began with tracing photographic projections. 

Outlining with black.

Lines and shapes defining images were painted in black, with the emergent forms then painted with brilliant, exterior latex paints and the growing confidence of a volunteer group hitting its stride.

Laura Clarke, left, addresses volunteers.

Over four days, special speakers visited the group for mini-seminars that introduced a variety of New Haven arts programs and artists to the FOCUS group. Among the speakers was Laura Clarke of Site Projects, Inc. who discussed public art in New Haven and the Site Projects sponsored Public Art Fellows program that this year featured a comic art boot camp for New Haven high schoolers, a visit by portrait artist Katro Storm, who discussed his latest exterior mural outside the Stetson Library on Dixwell Avenue, and Rafael Ramos who gave an overview of creative operations and events at Bregamos.

Each day, a new panel emerged from the FOCUS team reflecting the spirit and mission of Bregamos, while instilling a sense of pride, accomplishment and camaraderie among the group of volunteers. 

Amy Ren, center, top row, said FOCUS was the best way to start her education.

FOCUS team member Amy Ren, who seemed to reflect the group’s experience, provided this summary of her participation in the pre-orientation FOCUS on New Haven program and her community service experience at Bregamos: 

Communicating with vivid color.

Working at Bregamos was truly the best way I could’ve started my Yale education. My experience at Bregamos was nothing but memorable, from our musical lunch breaks to the tour of Erector Square to the meticulous tracing. I learned how to build relationships with people through teamwork and art. I saw the strong messages we were able to send through vivid colors and meaningful subjects. The FOCUS on New Haven program exposed me to the beautiful and underrated art community that exists here and I will continuously be grateful for that.”

FOCUS’s Focus

FOCUS participants working at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen Pantry.

The Focus On New Haven program is supported by staff members Marquita Taylor, assistant director for innovation and leadership development, and Program Manager Mark Fopeano.

We want students to see New Haven as a rich environment full of interesting people and organizations that they can learn from and contribute to,” said Taylor, who has developed and leads training for Community Engagement 101. New Haven is not our Playground.”

Program goals aim to improve town-gown relations, poke holes in the stigmatizing narrative about New Haven,” and spread FOCUS values throughout the Yale student body.

Among FOCUS values is the practice of developing cultural humility, and root care and support for others not [grounded] in guilt/saviorism, but in the pursuit of justice and in the opportunities for growth and learning often offered by community engagement/collaboration.”

FOCUS on New Haven dinner event.

The program has virtually doubled in scope from 51 participants and 15 student leaders in 2016, to 100 participants, 33 student leaders and up to 18 partnering organizations in 2018. Overall, FOCUS program growth has been expanding since 1991 when the program began introducing Yale sophomores and transfer students to the city, and more recently with the addition of incoming freshmen.

While the numbers may seem small compared to the more than 5,500 annual, undergraduate students at Yale, it is worth noting that Dwight Hall features over 90 student-run member groups engaging 3,500 students each year in service and social justice activities according to the Dwight Hall website. In total, Dwight Hall students contribute more than 150,000 hours of direct service and advocacy every year.

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