The following speech was originally presented by Yoly Miller at An Evening with Artists: An ArtsForward Fundraiser on December 12th, 2024.

I am an immigrant. As a child I wanted nothing more than to belong to my new world, but the school system I was entrusted into offered me very few opportunities.

I could do everything my classmates could do, sometimes do it better, and it didn’t matter. My place was apart from my classmates. I was assigned special classes because it was assumed that I didn’t know how to read or write or do math, but I already knew how to read and write, and speak English. I already knew how to multiply and divide.

And in areas where I was at the same level as everyone else, that school system made me feel stupid for making the same mistakes the regular students got praised for making. This was true for every class I took except two: Art and Music.

My music teacher didn’t believe in letting any student slide in her class. Whether we were playing musical instruments, learning a new dance, or singing in the choir, we were a team and in a team everyone is important. I was important.

In art class, the only thing that mattered was trying and failing and trying again until we achieved success because in art there are no mistakes, only opportunities to get better.

When you don’t fit the mold, when you don’t meet the standard, the system doesn’t know what to do with you, especially if you come from a culture that is incompatible with the system. When you are an immigrant child or a child of immigrants, regardless of if you speak English or not, the system is designed to keep you apart from everyone else because it is assumed that you don’t meet the standard. With the arts falling to the wayside in many curriculums, there are fewer opportunities for such children to integrate without falling behind.

Photos by The Green Photograph

By starting Proyecto Letras: literature, poetry, graphic design, photography, and publishing, I took a leap of faith. I chose to help the kids in my community feel like they too belong here.

I had to meet them at their level and their chosen language. Some kids couldn’t read or write in English, and a couple of them were nearly illiterate while others were meeting or exceeding expectations.

These kids fought me every step of the way and yet I could see them thriving. Maybe the knowledge that they weren’t going to be ignored gave them the confidence to create. No. They thrived because they had good caring teachers who walked them through every lesson in their chosen language.

There were no mistakes, just trying and trying again under the gentle lead of poets and artists.

Thankfully, I was able to draw from a fantastic pool of local writers, graphic artists, and loyal volunteers who not only taught their craft to my students, but who inspired them to create. Having a place like Summit Artspace open their galleries up to the scrutiny of middle schoolers was not only brave, it was life changing.

The kids that really hate writing, the ones for whom writers’ block is a natural state, they found that if given the right tools, the right teachers, and the right medium, they are indeed creative. Fact is, all but five of the photographs you’ve watched flicker by were taken by these kids.

This is how they see each other.

This was a fulfilling project to work on, but it was hard.

Would I have taken this project on if there had been no outside funding? Yes. Would I have been as successful and hopeful for the future of the project as I am today? I don’t know. Time is money. Publishing is expensive. People who were once interested lose interest.

And, right now, in this country, being an immigrant or a child of immigrants is tenuous. All these children have heard these last eight years is that they don’t belong. It’s the same message I heard when I was a child.

If it weren’t for ArtsForward making this project happen, there might not be any other place for them to learn about themselves through the grace of art. They might have grown up believing no one cares about what they think or feel.

Art is beauty and comfort.

It reveals that which feels like home and what feels foreign.

It is capable of letting us see into ourselves where we are pure and where we are grotesque.

Art can take us to strange places and make us feel uncomfortable. It can make us question everything but, most importantly,

ART BROADENS HORIZONS, BREAKS BORDERS, AND TEACHES EMPATHY.

Art can take that which seems immutable and change it.

These children seemed unreachable and incapable of change, but art changed them. We changed them.

We taught them a third language in which they could let themselves be understood and that is something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

And through their words and their captured and created images, they in turn changed our world.