Program areas at Ignition Community Glass
After School Matters (ASM): ICG offers dynamic after school arts and stem-based programming to 14-18 year-old Chicago youth through unique collaborative glass making activities. Students are introduced to the alchemy of glass through blown, fused, sculpted, flame worked and mosaic glass art. Bringing STEAM learning to life, students also develop a wide range of social-emotional skills (SEL) through the collaborative glass making process with problem solving, teamwork and trust, vulnerability, resilience and discipline critical to both safety and success. Ten weeks of programming was facilitated during the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 sessions and 6-weeks of intensive engagement was offered during summer of 2021 serving 15 students per session. Total hours of engagement with ASM students over the course of the 2022 program year exceeded 270 hours.
Ignition Community Glass continues to build its partnership with Embarc Chicago. During the 2022 program season, ICG engaged more than 200 Embarc Students in transformative experiential learning focused on building relationships and integrating social-emotional learning. Through dynamic hands-on glass making activities including fused, blown and flameworked glass art, ICG creates a safe space for students to explore and an environment where young adults are truly seen and believed in, and where the strength of the relationships between adults, students, and peers are core to the experience.
Through Chicago Community Trusts Safe and Peaceful Communities funding, Ignition Community Glass developed an exciting new partnership with Gary Comer Youth Center on Chicagos South Side. ICG engaged more than 40 of GCYCs youth in the process of creating beautiful and emotional stirring glass mosaic peace benches. The students collaboratively planned, sketched, painted and developed skills in woodworking and the art of glass blowing and project installation. The central focus of the engagement was, through art making, enabling students to safely discuss and develop a visual narrative to give voice to the trauma they feel as a result of violence, poverty, and systemic racism they face in their marginalized communities.