LYNN — Kayak and Sail Lynn (KASL) partnered with local artists from Raw Art Works’ Artist in Action group and the Sirens Crew this summer to complete projects for the nonprofit.
In June, the Brickyard Collaborative lent KASL a cargo container to store the kayaks and supplies for the nonprofit. Upon receiving this storage container, KASL reached out to the Sirens Crew, a collective of female-identifying artists, art therapists, and educators, to help spruce up the container, which is located at the waterfront on Blossom Street Extension.
KASL Director Frank Grealish said they were so fortunate to work with “awesome people” like Ali Miller from the Sirens Crew and the rest of the Sirens Crew team.
“When you join forces with people that share the same passion and purpose, really exciting outcomes can happen, which is certainly the case here,” Grealish said.
At KASL’s Summer Kick-Off event in June, the Sirens Crew invited the youth to begin painting the container with them and also asked for their input and ideas, which have since been incorporated into the container’s mural.
The youth were given the prompt, “If you could dream as expansively as the sky and sea, what do you envision possible for yourself, for your community and for all dreamers?”
“We took both word and image responses and created a piece to inspire viewers to dream bigger and pose the question to themselves, ‘why not?’ With neon whales swimming through the clouds we created together with the love of life in our hearts and the hope for the future. We design and create collaboratively and work to solve problems in ways where all voices can be heard before moving forward,” said Miller. “We have been honored to work with a program like KASL who share our values in community driven initiatives with a focus on decolonizing nature and making public space more accessible to all. We are excited to be on the water with our neighbors soon!”
On another KASL project, Artists in Action — a new civic engagement group at Raw Art Works that focuses on creating social change and positively impacting the local community through the arts — created water-proof decals that will be installed on KASL’s incoming batch of new kayaks.
“The Artists in Action team learned about Kayak and Sail Lynn firsthand from its founding members, became inspired by the mission, and absorbed the true importance of why equitable access to Lynn’s waterfront matters for our community,” said Kaitlyn Farmer of Raw Art Works.
Before creating the stickers, each artist was paired with a member of the Lynn community to ask them questions, including what they admired about the city. Artists then used those answers from the interviews as the inspiration for their decal designs.
School Committee member Tiffany Magnolia, one of the community members paired with an artist, said that, “Lynn’s strength is in its diversity, which is every type of diversity you can imagine, cultural, linguistic, racial, gender expression, you name it.”
The young artists also had a community service aspect of the project where they cleaned Blossom Street Extension.
“With KASL being a newer organization and this being the first go-round for the Artists in Action group, the partnership just made a lot of sense because we were able to learn, grow, and be flexible together with little pressure,” said KASL President Sean Reid. “We are so glad that we were able to collaborate because Kaitlyn and the young artists are nothing short of amazing.”
At the conclusion of the project, KASL hosted a pizza party and kayaking trip for the group of young artists.
“I’m glad that we got to contribute by bringing awareness to their organization and putting up stickers to bring our art to life,” said Nayeli Perez, one of the youth artists from Artists in Action who participated in this project.
KASL, whose purpose is to provide Lynn residents with accessible opportunities for water activities like kayaking and paddle boarding, said it wants to continue to build relationships and team up with other organizations, groups, and individuals.
To learn more about KASL, visit the website at https://www.kayakandsaillynn.com.
Allysha Dunnigan can be reached at [email protected].
