ALL-NEW // Teen Cooperative Program Offered!

Although the temperature is still in the single digits outside, here in the MF Education Department we can’t stop thinking about summer! Community Art Lab classes are almost full and we just finished selecting the teaching artists who will be involved with our completely revamped summer teen program, SUMMER ART COOPERATIVE.

Kevin Clancy's inflatable space.

The SUMMER ART CO-OP is an all-new program focused on collaboration, creative practice and exploration. It’s modeled after our artist in residence program and gives teens the support and space they need to develop new ideas, experiment with materials and collaborate with each other.

Teens will work together over the course of a month to plan their own event, while also spending time in the galleries, utilizing the museum’s resources and gaining exposure to local artists, independent thinkers, and all-around creative people through a series of workshops and skill shares. 

Drawing done by Nate McDonough.

Our hope for the program is that it is a little radical, kind of kooky and potentially-life changing—showcasing some of the infinite number of ways there are to exist as a creative person in the world. We think the idea of a starving artist needs a revamp, and our goal is to bring in folks who have figured out how to sustain their creative practices in ways that feel genuine, exciting and earnest to share their expertise with our students.


Want to learn about inflatable utopian spaces? You’ll get to meet Kevin Clancy and learn more about how to create portable social spaces. Want to know how to organize an alley-cat (or what an alley-cat is!)? Meet Anna-Lena Kempen who knows all about bike-related fun, events and art. Thinking about how to run a community engaged screen-printing shop? You’ll get to make some prints with Leslie Stem. What about how to cut records and make a communal mix tape? Learn all about it with Frederick Arnold. How pickles are made? We’ll make our own with Caiti Sullivan. How to make your comics look killer? Do some drawing with Nate McDonough. That and a lot more in store for our teens this summer.

Photo by Carson Davis Brown.

SUMMER ART CO-OP is FREE but you have to apply.

Please contact sarah@mattress.org with any questions or to submit an application.