Artists Mentoring Against Racism, Drugs and Violence has created opportunities for children for nearly two decades

Photographer Ulysses Flores began as an AMARD&V camper and now serves as a teaching artist for the summer program. 

'Not every artist can be a teacher. I tell artists it’s not just a gig, it’s a mission to teach kids to think differently and challenge themselves. Part of being an artist is giving back to the community.'
 
– Claudio Mir
 
 

Ulysses Flores was 12 when a family friend encouraged his parents to enroll him in a summer program where community-based artists, including students and alumni of Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, teach New Brunswick youth.
 
Young Uly went kicking and screaming.
 
“I just wanted to spend the summer hanging out with my friends,” Flores recalls. “I was really reluctant, but was hooked after the second photography class. And I begged to come back the next summer.”
 
Today, as a teaching artist for the program – Artists Mentoring Against Racism, Drugs and Violence,  known as AMARD&V – Flores, now 23, shares his passion for and knowledge of digital photography with participating youth each summer.
 
AMARD&V has provided creative and safe summer experiences for New Brunswick youth ages 10 to 16 free of charge since 1997. The program is organized by PRAB, Inc., Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Community Health Promotion Program, Rutgers’ Center for Latino Arts and Culture, and Suydam Street Reformed Church. Students are usually selected based upon recommendations from school guidance counselors and social workers.
 
Between 50 and 70 youth spend five weeks not only increasing their proficiency in the arts, but also their cultural understanding and critical thinking skills through team-building, workshops and discussions. The curriculum is designed to reduce bias and promote positive behaviors.
 
Flores now understands why his parents were adamant about his enrollment in the program years ago. “Kids get pulled into gangs and start experimenting with drugs. There’s an image circulating that you’re supposed to be in the streets, but there are other possibilities beyond what we’re surrounded by. The camp shows kids there are positive ways to benefit ourselves and our community.”
 
After two summers as an AMARD&V camper (the maximum allowed in order to provide access to other interested youth), Flores maintained contact with the program as he progressed through North Brunswick High School, where he excelled in additional photography courses. He then received an associate’s degree in commercial photography from Middlesex County College and returned as a teaching assistant for three summers before becoming a full teaching artist for the camp.
 
This fall, Flores will be a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he pursues a BFA in photographic and imaging arts with an advertising photography concentration.
 
He considers AMARD&V one of the most transformative experiences of his life. “I always loved cameras, but I’d never been exposed to photography as an art form – or a major or a career – before [AMARD&V],” Flores says, describing the mentorship, exposure, instruction and support he has received from the program over the past decade.
 
Student artwork is featured on this summer's camp tee-shirt.  
“This camp has always pushed me and my way of thinking. I even have ‘aha’ moments with my campers now and I think, ‘Wow, I’m actually a mentoring artist, just like the title of the camp says!’ Not only do students gain a deeper understanding of the arts, but they learn to express themselves and think differently.  The program actually turns lives around.”
 
Visual artist and playwright Claudio Mir serves as AMARD&V’s artistic director. A Mason Gross BFA alumnus, he also grew up in an area infested with drugs and gang activity. He sees himself in the faces of New Brunswick youth. “My mother gave me an ultimatum: either I stay ‘out there’ or I come ‘back in’ with her.  If I stayed outside, I could never come back home,” he says.
 
Mir believes the arts saved his life and remains motivated by the trajectories of AMARD&V alumni like Flores, whom he encouraged to pursue photography. He hopes the program continues to open doors for the campers and their families to actively participate in the world beyond their respective comfort zones.
 
“People pass by George Street Playhouse and Crossroads Theater and it never even crosses their minds that those spaces are also for them to enjoy. The fact that we are so close to Rutgers creates familiarity and gives them hope of being part of that space.”
 
The involvement of teaching artists from the New Brunswick area also helps foster a sense of “cultural citizenship” among program participants and the professional artists themselves. “Not every artist can be a teacher,” Mir says. “I tell artists it’s not just a gig, it’s a mission to teach kids to think differently and challenge themselves. Part of being an artist is giving back to the community.”
 
Mauricio Higuera, a painter and Mason Gross MFA candidate who teaches visual arts for AMARD&V, agrees. He began the summer encouraging his students to collectively draw what they wanted to see in a town and negotiate the space for their ideas.  The students immediately offered popular culture references to which they’d been exposed, including clothing stores and fast food chains.
 
“But I saw that, with time, and in realizing they could go beyond the habitual, these kids challenged themselves to draw from a more personal relationship with space, drawing parks, fields, fountains, trees… a play and live-in community,” says Higuera. “The best part of the experience is when you hear things like, ‘I’m going to ask my parents to let me paint at home.’”
 

For more information, please contact Saskia Agustin, 973.223.3264.