(2021) A Day in the Life of Noah Spottek

 By: Noah Spottek (Artists Working in Education) 

My name is Noah, and I’m an intern with Artists Working in Education (AWE). I’m going to be a sophomore at Golda Meir High School, and I really love music, manga, drawing, and my dog Panda. 

I’m so excited to be working as an intern with AWE this summer because I think that making art in the community is so important. It’s not every day that you get to meet artists who are doing what they love and are creating artwork to stay in your neighborhood – like a gift! Often, artwork can be given to communities and it can make them feel special, but they aren’t connected to the process of making it. They can feel like it is something that they can’t do on their own. The really cool part of working with AWE is that kids get to help make the artwork, so they feel more connected to it. 

For our first project, we are creating a bench for a community gathering space at Common Bond. Our days can be really interesting, fun, and empowering experiences. For example, a day may look like this:

We gather together as a team and discuss out plan for the day. It’s important for us to communicate and know what our goals are for the day. One day, we really focused on carefully cutting foam as the base layer for our bench. We glued the multiple pieces together. You can see in my pictures how kids helped cut and glue the pieces. After that, we nailed everything together to make it extra sturdy and then started creating a layer of tape. The kids who were helping did a really great job, especially because they probably don’t get to practice doing these things very often. Everyone seems like they had a good time and worked really hard.

I’m still working to feel confident about what I can do and contribute to the space and activities, especially because sometimes I can feel shy and self-conscious. However, because I know that I can sometimes feel this way it makes me thoughtful and aware that others can feel that way too. When I see someone who might be hesitant to participate, I know that they might just need some encouragement and support. Working with AWE is a big learning experience for me. I’m realizing every day that we all are growing and changing. We are learning new artistic practices and techniques as we work and learning to provide support and care for one another, even when we aren’t being asked to specifically do that. I hope that working with AWE is creating positive memories for the community like it is for me.