Artpark Bridges

CONNECT, EMPOWER, & CREATE

 

Artpark Bridges is a year-round community arts engagement program that connects participants with Artpark's legacy of innovation and possibility. 

Experience music, movement, dance, drama or visual art as unique opportunities for creativity, inclusion and healing through the arts. 

Artpark Bridges celebrates and supports all participants in their quest to find vibrant expression and expanded capacity. Interactive workshops are custom-designed to meet each group’s aims and needs. Evidence-based methodologies support meaningful art practices and experiences for people living with disAbilities and people self-identifying as non-disabled. 

We welcome: community groups. human service organizations, people living with progressive diseases, care partners for adults and youth, Neuro-diverse, and Neuro-typical participants 

Led by trained and certified Artpark teaching artists and Artpark artists-in-residence. Artpark Bridges programming is offered at Artpark and at partner sites in Niagara and Erie counties.

Ask about participating in our optional performance projects! 

Step 1: Connect 

Artpark establishes meaningful community outreach with human service organizations and groups throughout Erie and Niagara Counties with custom-designed Artpark Bridges programs. Specific priorities and needs of each partner and the people they serve are woven into therapeutic, interactive arts workshops and performance projects.

Since 2018, Artpark Bridges has been enriching lives by forging partnerships with People, Inc., Empower WNY, Buffalo Department of Education Adult ESL Division, St. Mary's School for the Deaf, Operation Children of the Military and the Parkinson's Community. New partners are welcome! Current programming also serves people living with dementia, care partners and independent living seniors.

step 2: empower

Artpark Bridges invites participants into the expressive arts with distinctive approaches to visual artmaking, creative moving, accessible dance, devised theater, and sonic exploration. Learn about Beautiful Questions to build an original story around Artpark's public art pieces. Activate giant sonic sculptures and hand-held meditation instruments to experience a communal sound bath. Discover art-making processes that unite Self, Others and Nature through Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Medicine Wheel practices. Participate in daytime festival projects, adopt a garden, witness plays or concerts, create an intimate performance project or perhaps even have a creative role in a major public event. With Artpark Bridges, creative engagement is fueled by a broad spectrum of choices where you make your own adventure!  

 

bridges testimonials

"Our Artpark artist-teacher has an almost magical way of encouraging each person to participate in their very own way and it feels wonderful. Picture a genuine sense of happiness, and experiences which are so very supportive and healing." - Artpark Bridges Dementia Community (care partner) participant

"It wasn't by holding a pencil that I learned to write a poem. It was by holding a drum. My drum beats put my own emotional story back into me so I could feel it in a new way, as if someone had listened. Drumming showed me what to write my poem about and the rhythm we made together taught me how the poem would sound." - Artpark Bridges Artisans Edge participant

"I discovered we all have our own sweet heartfelt melodies. Artpark Bridges literally showed me how our melodies can weave together to carry us through life’s hardest times." - Artpark Bridges Parkinson's participant

 

ONGOING initiatives

Sensing Here & Now is a free respite-with-partners program for people living with changes in memory & thinking capacity and their care partners. This program occurs every third Wednesday of the month. 

Artpark Bridges recognizes the deeply inherent human need for a sense of belonging and dignity, and understands how community and carepartners can shape a sense of mattering for people who may be dismissed or unheard. 

Sensing Here & Now is our unique response to WNY’s need for non-clinical interventions that enhance quality of life for people living with mild to moderate dementia, along with care partners, helpers and friends.

Evidence-based and pleasurable! Monthly gatherings offer opportunities to socialize while experiencing Artpark’s mission to “foster a transformative world of engagement”. As an Artpark Bridges program, participants experience our hallmark approaches to relaxed, sensory-rich activities accessible and restorative for all. 

Each gathering is centered in music, accessible art-making and fun movement games to awaken sensory enjoyment through all our senses.

Attendees can choose to participate or simply observe. It is a valid choice to soak up the energy of the music and other people without actually “doing”. Any place in the spectrum of observing-participating is embraced and respected.

Our Sensing Here & Now motto celebrates “There is only now”, a phrase so famously used by dance innovator George Balanchine. Don’t be surprised if we dub our program UNmemory Café because being able to remember is NOT required! Activities intentionally release memory-based restrictions. This is a “no answers are wrong” program designed to spark felt emotions and enjoyment in the present.

Inspired by the international model of Memory Cafe and other evidence-based methodologies, Artpark is proud to offer Sensing Here & Now, as a founding member of the WNY Exhale Memory Cafe Collective. 

Led by Cynthia Pegado, a Certified Dementia Volunteer (CDV), National Council of Certified Dementia Practitioners (NCCDP), and Artpark Bridges' Director. 

Artpark is a proud member of Dementia Friendly America's Memory Café Alliance.

Sound Dance seeks to facilitate expressivity, while creating an environment of wellness, self-care and respect. Through creative dance and sound-making, participants benefit physically, creatively, socially and emotionally while exploring personal expression and mutual collaboration. 

Led by Cynthia Pegado, an experienced teaching artist and movement expert, Sound Dance is built on a foundation of accessible movement strategies. Classes are suitable for all ages, and movement abilities, including people with Parkinson's disease and mobility challenges, people using wheelchairs, ambulatory people and anyone who would like to explore interpretive dance movement and rhythm

From an array of large sweeping gestures to small, precise movements, each person will find movement appropriate to their body's abilities as we move together to create dance and sound in the Artpark Percussion Garden.

Medicine Wheel Workshop Series - 2023 saw the start of a free-to-attend workshop series collaboration between Artpark Bridges and Artpark's Indigenous Programming. The series teaches participants the Indigenous Ways of Knowing about wellness and balance through art, drumming, and teachings.. The Workshops will dive into the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of life. Join us for transformative cultural immersion and newfound awareness. Remember to bring along a blanket or mat, stay hydrated with water, and dress accordingly for the weather. Let's weave together the threads of knowledge, culture, and community as we honor this sacred tradition.

Check our calendar for upcoming workshop events as they're announced. 

Past Bridges projects

Along with workshops throughout the community, Bridges participants have played vital roles in projects and performances at Artpark in recent years including our operas, annual festivals, and more. 

2024 

• Artpark Bridges and Jon Lehrer Dance Company continued their collaborative efforts from 2023 by creating a new performance titled "I'll take that!" 

2023

• Artpark Bridges created a new dance performance work "The Invitation" with Jon Lehrer Dance Company.
• Artpark Bridges Artist Residency crafted a new theatrical performance work "Between Love and Death: Tales from the Underworld", a contemporary re-telling of Orpheus and Eurydice with David Glass and Sketchbook Theatre as part of the inaugural Artpark Bridges Festival. 
• Bridges participants were cast members in the sold-out performance of  La Fura dels Baus' rendition of Carl Orff’s "Carmina Burana" in the Mainstage Theater. 

2022

• Created a new dance performance work "The Invitation" with Jon Lehrer Dance Company.
• Artpark Bridges Artist Residency crafted a new theatrical performance work "Between Love and Death: Tales from the Underworld", a contemporary re-telling of Orpheus and Eurydice with David Glass and Sketchbook Theatre as part of the inaugural Artpark Bridges Festival. 
• Artpark Bridges Artist Residency designed a site-specific dance for film work with Jon Lehrer Dance Company around Murmuration.
• Artpark Bridges Artist Residency made a new dance & vocalization performance work with Tiffany Mills Dance and Muriel Louveau.
• Artpark Bridges and the Anne Frank Project's devised theatre project showings continued after starting in 2021.

2021

• Devised a site-specific dance performance project, "Unity in Diversity" inspired by onsite sidewalk murals by Muhammad Zaman. 

2020

• Worked on the parking lot mural "The Solo Roths Waltz Across The Red Hot Colossus" in collaboration with The Solo Roths artist duo. 

2019

• The Sonic Pyramid Sculpture was installed as part of The Artpark Bridges garden. 
• Participated in a percussion parade with Cyro Baptista and Haudenosaunee Community as part of the Strawberry Moon Festival.
• Bridges participants from People Inc. and students from Artpark's Theatre Academy performed "I Want to Know What Love Is" in an on-stage community choir performance with Foreigner to a packed Amphitheater crowd. 

  Enjoy this short clip: 

2020

• Made their debut performance as part of "Odyssey" in the Mainstage Theater. 

  

  Odyssey Photo by Richard Termine

Artpark Bridges Garden

The Artpark Bridges Garden is a painted pyramid sculpture that incorporates different types of percussion instruments with a surrounding garden of greenery and flowers. The Garden was created in a collaborative effort of participants from the Artpark Bridges community engagement program, including People Inc., Empower, artist Brian Nacov and landscape designer Andrew Palinski. 

 

The Artpark Bridges Garden is supported in part by the Charles D. and Mary A. Bauer Foundation, the WGRZ Channel 2 and Tegna Foundation, Teresa Williams, Thomas Donahower. See below for a full listing of Artpark Bridges supporters. 

 

The founding of ARTPARK BRIDGES

Supporting Artpark’s mission to create unique cultural experiences and nurture artistic expression, Artpark Bridges developed into a standalone program following an initial community-outreach performance project called The Odyssey in 2018. The Odyssey, an immersive theater experience, featured over 200 community participants including individuals from People Inc. and Empower, two local health and human services agencies that serve adults living with developmental and intellectual disabilities. After the show closed, both organizations voluntarily offered positive Evaluation Feedback, citing their impact and benefits. This powerful outcome inspired Artpark to sustain and grow these community connections, by empowering individuals of diverse needs and backgrounds, uplifting their voices, and establishing opportunities to build and share their work publicly.

In 2019, with support from the Charles D. and Mary A. Bauer Foundation, Artpark Bridges invited returning partners People Inc. and Empower, to work with teaching artists Cynthia Pegado, Griffin Brady and Connor Caso on various artistic exercises. The groups met at Artpark and in their own facilities learning dance, drumming, and visual art as preparation for public performances at the Artpark amphitheater in Strawberry Moon Festival and on Mainstage with rock legends Foreigner as backing choir. Artpark Bridges participants also collaborated on a sonic sculpture installation, designing and decorating what became a focal point in the Artpark Percussion Garden, another initiative made possible by the support of Charles D. and Mary A. Bauer Foundation. This installation, called the Artpark Bridges Garden, represents an invitation towards universal barrier-free creativity for all.

In 2020, Cynthia Pegado was employed as a part-time seasonal Director of Artpark Bridges. During the COVID seasons of 2020 and 2021, she shifted strategies to ensure our work continued during lockdown, expanding to now serve local individuals with Parkinson’s and Artisan’s Edge, an offshoot program of People Inc. Cynthia arranged regular Zoom and live experiences, which often served as our participant’s only available outlet for social interaction. When possible, the program took full advantage of Artpark’s grounds to host socially distanced and masked expressive arts workshops and projects, and each group discovered new ways of creating on-site or off-site. As programming went forward, we learned that this was an extremely important decision since Bridges had already embedded itself as an invaluable link for our constituents. These interactions alleviated emotional and social health issues due to isolation and loss of other supportive services. 

As a capstone “lockdown” project, Cynthia partnered with The Solo Roths to attend Bridges’ virtual expressive arts workshops and incorporate source material and voices from Artpark Bridges participants into a commissioned parking lot mural at Artpark. Many of those ideas are now painted on Artpark’s Parking Lot D as part of “The Solo Roths Waltz Across the Red Hot Colossus Lot.” Importantly, our Bridges participants also spent the summer painting the designs under the guidance of the Solo Roths. 

In 2023, now in its fifth year, Artpark Bridges continues to serve a diverse community, focused on individuals receiving services through local health and human services agencies. This year Artpark Bridges includes participants from established relationships with People Inc, Empower, Artisans’ Edge, Parkinson’s Independent Living Community, Buffalo Public Schools Adult Learning ESL-Naturalization Program, and St. Mary’s School for the Deaf. New this year is programming for people living with sight loss and low vision. 

Ms. Pegado, now a year-round employee, will organize year-round workshops and programs for over 140 people based on current enrollment estimates from all partner agencies. Each group will have its own session structure, timeframes, and goals, but there will be a common thread of programming based around the Anne Frank Project, originated out of Buffalo State University. Teaching artists from the Anne Frank Project will work with Bridges participants in communal story-building projects.

The Anne Frank Project is a story-based learning program that believes that story matters, and that telling our stories will improve the world. Founded by professor Drew Kahn at Buffalo State University, the mission of the project is to use story as a vehicle for community building, conflict resolution, and identity exploration, inspired by the wisdom of Anne Frank. This will be the third year of partnership between Artpark Bridges and the Anne Frank project. 

This program year, January-December, Bridges aspires to host 56 session hours by teachers with the Anne Frank Project, 68 session hours by local guest artists, 30 session hours by indigenous teachers, 30 session hours by artist-in-residence Jon Lehrer Dance Company, 20 session hours by artist-in-residence Sly Boots/Griffin Brady, 28 session hours by local writers and 45 master class hours by Cynthia, totalling 277 session hours supporting our 140+ anticipated participants. 

 

Thank you to our SUPPORTERS

The Artpark Bridges program is supported by: 

Joe and Pam Priest, WGRZ Channel 2 and TEGNA Foundation, Teresa Williams, Thomas Donahower, Joseph Certo, Marla and Jeffrey Williams, Betty Szatkowski, Anthony Cipolla, Paulette M. Crooke, Roger Trevino, Joe Brown, Nancy DiBacco, Janice and Michael Vitch, Mary Powell, Kelly Turner, Greg Schlaich, Jerome P. Brydges and Family, David Barnes, Michele O. Heffernan, Jean Gaulin, Mike Schott, Maureen Schmitt, Thomas B. Burrows, Maureen Schmitt, Chester Spivey, Nick Langworthy, Adam Burns, Susan Royal, Senator Robert G. Ortt, Carol Calato, Michael Tunkey, Melissa Brydges, Margaret Nucci, Kelly Schultz, Glenn Hart, George Tysowsky, Erin Turner, Eric White, Elizabeth Brydges, Donna & JT Tomkins, Dave & Susan Wedekindt, Carol Mack, Barbara Rizzo, Andrew Brydges, Suzanne Diffine