Craft workshop held as part of Diversity Week
Avery Schultz-Majkrzak, 4, holds up a craft in the shape of a butterfly that she made Monday. She attended the Butterfly Project, an arts and crafts event that was a part of UW-Whitewater’s Diversity Week.
October 17, 2017
Monday’s Butterfly coloring workshop was aimed at rasing awareness for diversity through creativity, as part of campus diversity week.
The Butterfly Project Workshop is part of UW-Whitewater’s Diversity Forum and was held on Monday outside of Roberta’s Art Gallery in the University Center.
The workshop encourages students and faculty to participate by coloring paper butterflies to put on the gallery glass, as a part of an art installation, or turn the butterfly into a magnet to take home.
The Butterfly Project was started by the Holocaust Museum in Houston to represent the children who died during the Holocaust.
The inspiration for this project came from a poem called “The Butterfly,” which was written by a Jewish child in a concentration camp who, after capture, said he never saw another butterfly, UC Arts Manager Chloe Rettinger said.
“It’s grown to represent embracing diversity, inclusion, finding hope and embracing each other’s differences,” Rettinger said. “It’s a very simple but powerful project.”
This year, the College of Arts and Communication is hosting the Diversity Forum called “pARTicipate”. The Butterfly Project is a celebration of diversity.
“One thing that UW-Whitewater focuses on is diversity and making sure that everyone is treated equally,” Chynarose Degner said, a Roberta’s Art Gallery assistant.
Degner said the butterflies represent people as unique individuals.
The workshop was popular amongst students, and an entire class took the workshop by storm after stopping by to decorate their own butterflies. The workshop even temporarily ran out of paper due to the influx of people, Degner said.
Sophomore Kevin Abernathy, a Sociology student, came to the workshop for his World of the Arts class.
“I saw the coloring, and I got excited because I haven’t colored in a while,” Abernathy said.
Abernathy recently joined the Mixed Race Student Union and said he feels good about diversity on campus.
The Diversity forum runs until Friday Oct. 20, and the workshop is one of many art exhibitions, performances, and collaborative art projects that take place during the week.
It’s not too late to pARTicipate and color a butterfly to add to the collection.
The Butterfly Project will go on throughout diversity week and will result in a colorful butterfly colony.
Jenna Kenny, lead 4-K teacher at the Children’s Center pre-school program, instructs a group of her students on how to create colorful art in the shape of butterflies Monday at a Divsersity Week event.
