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Art Classes for Youth
Expand your creativity in one of our innovative art classes for youth ages 5 and up!
The health and safety of our students, instructors, and families is of utmost importance. After careful deliberation and review of the COVID data in Hamilton County, we have determined that a remote format is the safest option for this fall. Most of our classes will be hosted remotely via Zoom*, with some outdoor/distanced in-person opportunities**. In addition, we will be offering an upcoming series of curated Family Night art experience boxes for the whole family to create together.
Logging into class from home is easy and connects students and their guardians with high quality arts education designed and led by local professional artists as well as to other young artists and their families. If you cannot attend one or more of the classes, lessons will be recorded*, so you can access instructor demos at a later time.
8 week Fall Term: September 28 – November 21, 2020
10% off for families registering more than one person with code: Family2020
**Participants in outdoor/distanced in-person classes need to complete both Emergency Contact and Photo Release forms. Classes hosted via Zoom will be recorded, so participants are asked to complete a media release form.
SLIDING SCALE: Kennedy Heights Arts Center strives to make arts accessible to everyone. Sliding scale fees available for those in financial need. Click here to download an application.
CANCELLATION POLICY: Tuition is non-refundable, but can be transferred to another course if the student withdraws at least five days prior to the beginning of the course.
Creative Movement & Play (In-person, outdoors, social distancing)
- Saturdays, September 12, 2020 10:30 am - October 31, 2020 11:30 am
Ages 5 -12 Instructor: David Choate, Revolution Dance Theater Shake off the dust, stretch your body, and breathe in fresh air! This class is designed for children and families looking to stretch their bodies through creative movement & play in a safe..
Magnificent Makers
- Mondays, October 12, 2020 4:00 pm - November 30, 2020 5:00 pm
Ages 5 – 12. Instructor: Tausha Cox Learn the stories, impacts and artistic practices of contemporary artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). We will explore a wide variety of materials and techniques, and pay homage to each..
Young Entrepreneurs: Not So Small Businesses
- Fridays, October 16, 2020 4:30 pm - December 11, 2020 5:30 pm
Ages 8 – 12. Instructor: Latausha Cox Do you love to solve problems? In this class, youth will nurture business ideas into action by creating a creative solution to a community need. Participants will enjoy understanding who needs their help (customer), developing..
Kennedy Heights Arts Center
Summer Camp @ Home!
Registration for 2020 Summer Camps is open!
Eight engrossing Summer Camps designed and led by local professional artists to keep your child’s imagination engaged, their spirits high, and their connections to community strong from the safety of home this summer.
Each camp includes:
- Five days of immersion into art-making, creative self-expression, and self-directed imaginative play. Online sessions are just the launching pad. Campers use their imaginations as their guide as they become engrossed in creativity throughout each day.
- Indoor/outdoor exploration and observation-based activities to strengthen campers’ perceptions of self, others, and their surroundings.
- Inspired creative challenges to hone campers’ creative problem solving and ingenuity with materials.
- A thoughtful bundle of art supplies provide a material foundation for campers’ creative endeavors (kits will be sanitized for safety and made available for pick up the weekend prior to camp).
- Dynamic remote interactions each day with artist-instructors, peers, and teen mentors to catalyze and reinforce each camper’s dive into their own curiosity.
- Each week will end with a joyful sharing of campers’ projects via Google Meets, an edited video, or possibly in some cases, a socially distanced sharing at the Arts Center.
Camp content will be hosted on Google Classroom, and will include face-to-face interactions & physical activities for 1 hour each day, as well as prerecorded instructional videos so campers can engage and return to project instructions at their own pace.
Camp tuition is reduced from $175 to $100 + $15 materials fee in consideration of the remote format.
Kennedy Heights Arts Center strives to make arts accessible to everyone. Sliding scale fees are available for those in financial need. For more information, download the KHACSlidingScaleRegistrationForm and email to classes@kennedyarts.org or call 513-382-4913 to register over the phone.
CANCELLATION POLICY: We understand that our new remote format may not work for everyone, so if you registered for camp before we announced the change to the remote format, we will provide a full refund if you choose to cancel your registration. Also, if any camps are cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you will also receive a full refund. Otherwise, tuition is non-refundable, but can be transferred to another course if the student withdraws at least five days prior to the beginning of the course.
No events are currently available for registration, please check back later.
Adult and Teen Classes
Explore new ways to create community within a virtual environment––watch your favorite instructors perform live demonstrations, share your progress, and give and receive live feedback. Logging into class from home is easy and connects you to high quality arts education designed and led by local professional artists and to other local creatives. If you cannot attend one or more of the classes, lessons will be recorded*, so you can access instructor demos at a later time.
8 week Fall Term: September 28 – November 21, 2020
10% off for families registering more than one person with code: Family2020
All Adult & Teen Classes will be hosted via Zoom*.
*Classes will be recorded, so all participants are asked to complete and submit a Media Release.
SLIDING SCALE: Kennedy Heights Arts Center strives to make arts accessible to everyone. Sliding scale fees available for those in financial need. Click here to download an application.
CANCELLATION POLICY: Tuition is non-refundable, but can be transferred to another course if the student withdraws at least five days prior to the beginning of the course.
Tellus Zine
Tellus Zine is a youth-led digital publication, showcasing art and creative writing by young adults from across Greater Cincinnati. Editorial board members are outside-of-the-box artists and writers, in grades 9-12, who feel passionate about sharing their voice and the voice of other teens and who want to build a community of creative young leaders in Cincinnati. Tellus Zine’s mission is to provide a platform for young people to express themselves bravely and creatively as a part of our diverse community. Click here for more information.
Teen Artists for Change
Teen Artists for Change (TAC) is a program for youth artists and writers, in grades 7-9, who want to make an impact on the world around them. Click here for more information.
Clay Hand Building
- Mondays, September 28, 2020 6:30 pm - November 16, 2020 7:30 pm
Ages 16 – Adult. Instructor: Lynne Gibb. Learn to make functional pottery and sculptural pieces of ceramic art! In this class we will instruct you in the three basic clay hand building forming processes: pinch, slab and coiling. Glazing will also be..
Drawing with Soft Pastels
- Tuesdays, September 29, 2020 6:30 pm - November 17, 2020 8:00 pm
Ages 14- Adult. Instructor: William Linthicum. Immerse yourself in a medium that is challenging and rewarding. Soft pastels are unique in their brilliant, vibrant colors, and are too often overlooked by contemporary artists. Through a variety of exercises and demonstrations William Linthicum,..
Open Studio (remote)
- Thursdays, October 1, 2020 9:30 am - November 19, 2020 10:30 am
Ages 16 – Adult. Instructor: Lynne Gibb. Explore new ways to create community within a virtual environment––check in with your favorite “studio-mates”, share your progress, and give and receive live feedback. This remote open studio is time for artists of all practices..
Portrait Drawing
- Thursdays, October 1, 2020 6:00 pm - November 19, 2020 7:30 pm
Ages 14- Adult. Instructor: Paul Loehle Learn fundamental and advanced techniques for drawing the human face. We will work together to develop basic skills in black-and-white mediums (primarily graphite pencil and charcoal) toward the goal of drawing human portraits. We’ll focus on..
Home Apothecary
- Fridays, October 2, 2020 6:30 pm - November 20, 2020 8:00 pm
Ages 14- Adult. Instructor: Carisa Hund-Bunten This course will apply a foundation of knowledge, skill set and home remedy bases for the home herbalist to expand and sustain their own Home Apothecary. Introduce or reacquaint yourself with plants and their medicinal qualities..
Illustrative Becoming
- Mondays, October 12, 2020 6:30 pm - November 30, 2020 8:00 pm
Ages 14- Adult. Instructor: Tausha Cox Illustrative becoming is a term created to describe the reflective process of using drawings to capture themes in order to discover one’s unique voice. The process requires an inward exploration of past experiences to truly find..
Garden of Hope
2020 Creative Community Artist-in-Residence Project with Leesa Haapapuro
Making art together (but apart) during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Thank you to everyone who participated in our 2020 Creative Community Artist-in-Residence project with Leesa Haapapuro this Spring!
Leesa was in “virtual residence” at Kennedy Heights Arts Center from April 20 – May 31. Working from her studio in Dayton, Ohio, Leesa created four public art installations that serve as messages of hope from our community, to our community. These powerful messages were gleened from online submissions from community members, and translated into the form of plants using “floriography”, the coded language of plants.
The four sculptural installation sites are:
Kennedy Heights Arts Center (6546 Montgomery Road)
Woodford Paideia Academy (3716 Woodford Road)- this has since been removed. You can view pictures of it HERE.
Pleasant Ridge Branch Library (6233 Montgomery Road)
Pleasant Ridge Montessori (5945 Montgomery Road)
A special THANK YOU to our volunteer “Master Gardeners” (Mindy Burger, Michelle Reeves, Diane Roketenetz, Grace Severyn, Carrie Shotwell & family, and Joanie Weidner) who helped create some of the larger plants that make up the installation at Pleasant Ridge Montessori.
We had a wonderful response to our Garden of Hope kits, distributing a total of 86 free kits, which allowed community members to participate in the project by creating your own plant art to spread the message of hope with their neighbors! Completed plant arrangements now adorn front yards, front doors, and are displayed in windows. Take a walk around the neighborhood, and be inspired by these bright messages of positivity! View the interactive map to find other people’s creations. The floriography list is available online here, so you and your neighbors can decode the plant messages.
In conjunction with Leesa’s giant daisy installation at Woodford Paideia Academy, we also distributed 70 free daisy making kits for kids through our “Creativity Kit” program through Cincinnati Public Schools’ lunch pick-up times at the school.
Thank you for joining us in contributing to this collaborative project!
Eventually, once we can gather again, the intent is that community members can bring their smaller plant creations to the Arts Center to be added onto the art installation created by Leesa, and we’ll have a celebration of our “Garden of Hope!”
UPDATE: We are continuing our theme of Garden of Hope by planting Black-eyed Susans for JUSTICE in the front lawn of Kennedy Heights Arts Center to show our solidarity and advocate for an end to racism. Pick up a free black-eyed susan kit on the front porch of KHAC, make it at home, and plant it in the front yard of the Arts Center.
Participation is FREE, thanks to generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, and the Eleanora C. U. Alms Trust, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee.
Leesa Haapapuro is an interdisciplinary artist from Dayton, Ohio, proficient in a wide variety of techniques from stone carving to welding to weaving. Leesa’s efforts to connect with others through her artistic practice are often radical and transformative. She has made socially-engaged, collaborative art projects and site-specific installations with more than 10 communities in Ohio. She received the City of Dayton’s Community Artist award and is a three-time recipient of The Montgomery County Regional Arts and Cultural Individual Artist Fellowship.
No events are currently available for registration, please check back later.
Outreach Programs
We believe that the arts are for everyone. Kennedy Heights Arts Center provides a range of outreach programs that bring the arts out into the community. The goal of these programs is to provide access to high-quality arts education for everyone regardless of economic circumstance.
Our experienced team of arts educators offer ongoing classes as well as one-time programs in schools, libraries, community centers, group homes and other community settings. Some locations have included:
- Pleasant Ridge Montessori
- Silverton Paideia Academy
- Woodford Paideia School
- Academy of World Languages
- Talbert House
- Cincinnati Public Libraries
For more information about participating in one of these outreach programs or about how you can bring Kennedy Heights Arts Center to your organization, please contact our Director of Arts Engagement and Learning.
No events are currently available for registration, please check back later.
Kennedy Heights Arts Center, in partnership with PAR-Projects, offers a range of classes for adults and youth in digital media creation, including: video, photography, animation, graphic design and web design.
No events are currently available for registration, please check back later.
- Tuesday - Friday: 10:00 - 5:00
- Saturday: 11:00 - 4:00
- Closed Sunday - Monday