Prevent Child Abuse Lake County Hosts CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project At South Shore Convention And Visitors Authority

Prevent Child Abuse Lake County Hosts CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project At South Shore Convention And Visitors Authority

On Thursday, the 2016 CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project hosted by Prevent Child Abuse Lake County was held at the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority to much fanfare from the students, teachers and organizations involved who worked to bring attention to child abuse and neglect in Northwest Indiana.

“Today is our ‘CHAIR’ish The Children’ silent auction and reception,” said Sharon Hyeck, Treasurer of Prevent Child Abuse Lake County and Chairwoman of the CHAIR’ish The Children Committee.

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'CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project is a chair decorating contest sponsored by Prevent Abuse Lake County in which participants are encouraged to design a chair that artistically represents what it means to cherish our community’s children. Designs were to reflect the artist's’ thoughts about children, childhood and what children mean to the future of our world.

“All of the chairs that are submitted are completed by middle school and high school art departments as well as a few community chairs,” Hyeck said. “They’ve been on display all month for Child Abuse Prevention Month. It’s an educational tool that we’re using in the schools to kind of raise awareness about child abuse and cherishing our community’s children.”

The CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project was opened up to middle and high school students from throughout Lake County. To level the playing field, chairs designed by middle schools were judged separately from those completed by high school students.

“We get a lot of schools coming back year after year,” said Hyeck. “There are a lot of students who started as freshmen who enter every year until they graduate so it’s definitely something with which we get a lot of positive feedback from the teachers. It’s just a good tool to get them thinking about what was great about their childhood and what made it special.”

Mario Bedolla, a senior at Merrillville High School, created a chair called ‘Childhood Marvels’ and was participating in the ‘CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project’ for the first time. He spoke about the challenge the project presented.

“It was kind of difficult,” Bedolla said. “In most of the classes there were a lot of people working on them. I was the only one who mostly worked on it and people would help with little stuff here and there but everything was drawn by me and I painted it myself.”

There to speak from South Shore Arts was their Director of Education, Jillian Van Volkenburgh, who works closely with schools in Northwest Indiana to promote the arts.

“We do a lot of work in education with children,” said Van Volkenburgh. “I’m fortunate to work with the arts in Northwest Indiana. Through the organization I belong to we serve over 30,000 youths a year. You can find study after study that supports the impact of the arts on people, communities and education. There are tons of skills that students gain from the arts. Confidence, creativity, problem solving, perseverance, receiving constructive feedback, collaboration, dedication and accountability are really important things that students gain from being a part of the arts.”

Danielle Sparavalo, Special Events Coordinator with the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority, was excited to be hosting another CHAIR’ish The Children Art Project at their location and said, “This is just a great partnership we have with Prevent Child Abuse Lake County and it’s great to have them here. We’ve had the chairs here for about a month and over 1,000 people have voted for their favorite.”

Along with the reception there was a silent auction held in which those in attendance could bid on whichever chair caught their eye. Bids began at $5 and increased in increments of $1. First, second and third place chair artist winners from middle and high schools received $250, $100, and $50 that went to their school's’ art department.