The Cloud Foundation's Teen Curatorial Program

We're hiring!
The Cloud Foundation seeks Boston-area public high school students
(ages 14-19) for the 2009 Teen Visual Art, Spoken Word, and Film Curatorial Groups.
Click to download an application form (Word document)

The Cloud Foundation’s Teen Curatorial Program gives young people from throughout Boston a setting in which to express their opinions on art, film, performance, and design, and to create exhibitions and events that express their artistic vision and showcase an authentic teen perspective. The Visual Art, Film, Spoken Word, and Graphic Design Curatorial Groups have created shows and events exploring themes from responses to violence, to online communities, to identity, to relationships. The Teen Curators work with professional artist-educators to create exhibitions, film screenings, and spoken word performances as part of YouthFusion at Cloud Place - a series of events that draws more than 200 young artists and 1,000 audience members yearly.

click for a Teen Curators Slideshow

The Visual Art Curators bring contemporary art to the public by organizing exhibitions at Cloud Place and collaborating in art-related events throughout Boston. The Visual Art Curators' responsibilities include: seeking visual art submissions from their peers, creating and distributing Calls for Art, reviewing submissions, and designing exhibitions at Cloud Place and other venues. The group also works together on collaborative pieces in the studio at Cloud Place, and explores public and performance art. The Curators learn about Boston's arts community, and how to evaluate and seek out works of art, through visits to local art venues and meetings with professional curators and artists.

The Film Curators The teen Film Curators create collaborative films and direct the YouthFusion Film Series, highlighting teens' film/video work and critically analyzing films. The Film Curators receive hundreds of submissions from around the world and work as a group to select and screen the highest quality films at Cloud Place. The Film Curators' responsibilities include: creating, publicizing, and distributing a call-for-entries; determining who/how to outreach for film submissions and audiences; reviewing and selecting films based on established criteria; planning the format of events; and collaborating with the other Teen Curatorial Groups to document events at Cloud Place and create multi-media shows.

The Spoken Word Curators work with a professional poet and performer, composing and performing original spoken word poetry and seeking out new writing and performance talent from all over the city. The Spoken Word Curators' responsibilities include: creating original poetry around themes and ideas determined by the group, contributing regularly to group critique and evaluation of new poetic works, facilitating welcoming and exciting spoken word open mic events for teens at Cloud Place, and performing for the public at venues around the city. The Spoken Word Curators will also work with the Film and Visual Art Curatorial groups on collaborative artistic works for display and performance at Cloud Place.

The Design Curators are drawn from the Film, Spoken Word, and Visual Art Curators. The group works with an artist educator to collaboratively research, design, and produce promotional materials for selected events at Cloud Place (exhibitions, screenings, YouthFusion events, performances, etc). Over a school year the Design Curators master the basics of a variety of design and digital imaging programs, moving from designing postcards to promote the YouthFusion events through creating screenprinted T-shirts or posters to a final project determined by the group.

YouthFusion Series
YouthFusion is a year long series of film screenings, exhibitions, and performances organized by the Cloud Place Youth Curators and coordinators. The goal of the Youth Fusion Series is to develop new audiences for youth artwork; to foster relationships between diverse youth art programs; and to provide incentives for aspiring young artists to create to their highest potential.

Above: TShirt designed for YouthFusion 2007 by the Teen Curators

The Teen Curatorial Program is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Teen Curatorial Program is supported in part by an Anonymous Foundation.