Our Story

The Bowery Arts Project was started by Pamela Bell and Shelley Sonenberg. Classes began in the spring of 2011 on the non-medical detox floor at Project Renewal's facility on East 3rd Street in New York City. The motivation to bring an art class to the Bowery grew from our desire to give back and reach out directly to a community of men that lived in our neighborhood but who we had no interaction or contact with. We didn't know at first if the idea would work but we trusted our own connection to art making and to our personal experience with communicating with others through the process of making art and hoped for a positive response.

How to run the program developed organically and has proven to be tremendously successful for all involved, and far beyond our initial, hopeful expectations. The class is taught and run by an amazing group of volunteers, some are professional artists, some are not. Our volunteers have not been formally trained as art therapists and traditional art therapy techniques are not consciously employed.  Our mission is to come together with an open mind, as equals, to sit together with the clients make art, listen to music, have something to eat and talk. We ask questions of each other, we collage or draw or write or build or sing but most importantly, we have a conversation....about anything. The heart of the program's success consists of nothing more than openly, and non-judgmentally, listening, sharing our time and emphasizing kindness.