Stronger Together: A Cross-Community Art Collaboration Blossoming in Its Third Year 

For the third year in a row, a special collaboration between the children of St. David’s Harman Center programs and Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Sunday School classes has brought to life a series of powerful, healing artworks—this time under the theme of Solidarity. 

Each spring, this intergenerational and inter-institutional art project invites young artists ages 3 to 6—participants from our East African Responsive Autism Day Treatment and Family Place therapeutic early intervention programs—to create beautiful collaborative artworks. These pieces are layered with meaning and draw on their lived experience. And as we know, those artists—especially children in Family Place—have experienced more adversity than many of us will in a lifetime. This can include homelessness, domestic violence, parental death or incarceration, and more. But every day, and in their artwork, these children prove that growth and beauty happen, even in the most difficult circumstances.  

Westminster’s Sunday School children also join the process—like artistic pen pals—as they reflect on the themes and respond with their own additions. While the children work at different times and never meet face to face, their multifaceted expressions of hope, strength, and creativity speak to their—and our—deep, shared humanity.  

This year’s piece, Stronger Together clarifies the notion of Solidarity for young learners, comprising five interconnected wooden panels adorned with painted hand gestures that signify unity and support. Surrounding the hands are colorful log slices—each one painted by a child and symbolizing an individual contribution to a greater whole. It’s a tactile, vibrant representation of solidarity: how unique identities, when brought together, create something unbreakable. 

The process itself is as meaningful as the product. “My heart feels calm and happy when I paint,” one child told us. Therapeutic art-making offers children a way to process emotions, develop fine motor skills. And the reception to celebrate their work allows children to feel pride in their self-expression and connection with others. 

The inaugural 2023 exhibit, Re-Imagining the World, invited children to depict a world made happy, safe, and kind—each canvas a reassembled patchwork of 30 children’s watercolor and chalk pieces. In 2024, inspired by the Minneapolis urban landscape, the children explored how Hope and Beauty can arise from unexpected places, assembling painted canvases with blooming paper flowers. 

With each year, this collaboration has grown more meaningful for our communities. Not only a reflection of the therapeutic power of art—it also reflects the beauty of reaching across difference and through struggle to create something larger than ourselves. Or as one of our 2025 guiding quotes reminds us: “Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.”