Since our first visit to the Freedom House as a class, I found that it had been on my mind a lot more than I expected. I realized how important the work that they do is to the community and I was eager to help. My expectations for our next visit on March 1st were fairly open-ended. I was hoping to jump right in and help out in anyway that I could, but I didn’t have any sense of what that could entail. I prepared myself to be as open-minded as possible and to go with the flow of the Freedom House’s routine. I also wanted to bring along my sketchbook in case an idea for my project hit me and I wanted to continue brainstorming.
During this visit, we helped with some daily tasks like cleaning the dining room and vacuuming. It was a little difficult to gage how helpful we were to the employees because we had finished our jobs rather quickly with five people. One of my favorite moments of our visit was interacting with Haley, a little girl whose family is currently residing at the Freedom House. I was not expecting to spend time with the children, yet as she was helping me clean the dining room, it became the highlight of the trip. I could see creating something for the kids as my final project.
While I feel like we did some useful work, I’m hoping to go deeper with our impact in future visits going forward. I’m glad that we had the opportunity to ask the employees of what they thought the Freedom House needs for artwork; brainstorming and bouncing ideas off my fellow classmates was a lot easier being there in the space. I can definitely see our projects becoming a collaborative effort. For our next visit, I would also like to seek out if we could speak with the guests directly about what kinds of art they would like to see around their home. I’m eager to learn about using the letterpress in class because I feel like that could be a useful tool in creating work for the Freedom House and open up more opportunities.
