Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms

Awakening Creativity shows in gloriously illustrated detail how Lily Yeh guides a participatory process of artistic expression that uplifts a distressed community. Her open, joyful approach to artmaking is a model for building healthy cultural esteem.

Lily Yeh is an acclaimed visual artist who has worked with students, community leaders and teachers in Canada, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Syria, Italy and in cities and neighborhoods across the United States. Yeh is considered one of America's most innovative urban designers and social pioneers. Awakening Creativity is her first, much-awaited book.

In Awakening Creativity, Yeh facilitates the art-making process for students of The Dandelion School, the only nonprofit organization in Beijing that serves the children of poor migrant workers coming from 24 provinces. Yeh worked with hundreds of students, teachers, volunteers and workers to transform the school's main campus with mural painting, mosaics, and environmental sculpture. Students were involved in every aspect of the art-making, which has become central to the school's curriculum and well-being.

Lily Yeh founded Barefoot Artists, a volunteer organization that uses the power of art to revitalize impoverished communities. Yeh is also the co-founder and former director of The Village of Arts and Humanities that has brought to life over 200 abandoned lots in the most distressed districts of North Philadelphia.