Join us for an exploration of the Arts & Humanities at Yale!
Join the Yale community this summer to make and study art, history, and culture! Yale Pathways to Arts & Humanities Summer Scholars Program is a free, two-week academic program for New Haven and West Haven public high school students. In Yale’s special collections, museums, and School of Art, you’ll come face to face with historical documents, art from around the world, and new inspiration for your own creativity. Yale faculty and graduate students will offer workshops on a variety of topics, including graphic design, sculpture, photography, race & citizenship, painting, ancient languages, and more. You can see the 2024 closing ceremonies video here.
Program Eligibility
- Open to any New Haven, West Haven, or Orange (Amity) public school student currently in grades 9 - 11.
Application Information
- Complete online application by April 4, 2025: onha.yale.edu/ArtSummer25App.
- As part of the application, you will need to send your teacher the recommendation link: onha.yale.edu/ArtTeachRec.
Program Dates
Student Orientation Day: Thursday, July 3, 2025
Workshop Dates: Mon - Friday, July 21 - August 1, 2025
Students must commit to all days of the program
Example of daily schedule:
9:00am - 9:30am Advisory Time
9:30am - 11:00am Morning Workshop: Paint & Sculpt
11:00am - 12:30pm Enrichment: CCAM Blended Reality Tour
12:50pm - 1:50pm Lunch: Franklin Dining Hall
2:00pm - 3:30pm Afternoon Workshop: Art & Protest in the Beinecke Archives
3:30pm - 3:45pm Recap, Snack, and Dismissal
Workshop Options
Students attend 4 workshops
The Art & Science of Paper | Yale Center for British Art
How do plants become paper? What chemical reactions occur as paper ages? Why might a print from the 1700s be in better condition than a newspaper from the 1900s? Explore art, chemistry, and history as we practice making, using, and preserving paper.
College Essay: 10 Days, 1 Killer Essay
A creative approach to brainstorming, drafting, and revising your college essay. For rising seniors only.
Fashion and Fiber Arts around the World | Yale University Art Gallery
Come explore the Yale University Art Gallery and look at fashion, textiles, and fiber arts from around the world! Students in this workshop will learn to weave on a hand-held loom small, draw and write while looking at works of art, and get a behind the scenes look at the Gallery.
Hew Locke, Label Writing, and Curatorial Practice | Yale Center for British Art
Explore the art of Guyanese-British sculptor Hew Locke and “remix” the art collection of the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) with YCBA educators. Use writing, drawing, and collage to think creatively and critically about museums, art, and history.
Ink & Irony: The Art of British Comics and Political Cartoons | Yale Center for British Art
Explore the unique visual medium of comics throughout history! Focusing on autobiographical comics and zine-making, students will draw self-portraits, create small handmade books, and publish a final two-page comic story. This is not a superhero or manga comic workshop. We will learn how the comic format can help us tell our own meaningful stories.
Intending to Impact through Playwriting, Performance, and Response | David Geffen School of Drama
This playwriting workshop centers intentionality with the words we use creatively and critically. Students will write a short play, see their text performed by others, and use the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process to deconstruct what they saw, felt, and offer feedback in a generous and nuanced manner.
Intro to Still Life Drawing | School of Art
What does it mean to construct meaning through mark-making? Can how we use and display objects allude to a narrative? This Still Life Drawing workshop provides an introduction to observational drawing using everyday objects as a way to create a narrative or self-portrait.
Investigating Provenance: Uncovering the Mysteries and Journeys of the Babylonian Collection | Peabody Museum
Join the Babylonian Collection this summer to investigate the mysteries of how objects from the ancient Middle East ended up all the way in New Haven, CT. Develop skills and knowledge in investigation, research, provenance, Middle Eastern history, and gain hands-on experience with museum objects thousands of years old!
Making Music with my Feet: Rhythm Tap Dance and its Histories | Department of Music
Join us for an introduction to rhythm tap dance, a percussive vernacular art form pioneered by Black Americans. Students will learn about tap’s rich history (including how tap intertwines with the historical development of jazz and the American stage and screen, and how tap’s current thriving pop, hip-hop, and jazz scenes emerged) and will use their feet to express themselves musically through beats and melodies. Tap shoes will be given to students and no dance experience is required.
Learn how to make soft sculptures combining sewing and assemblage while learning foundational painting techniques around the theme of rasquachismo. Embrace rasquache aesthetics, a term adapted during the Chicano/Mexican Art Movement which is “making the most from the least”, using materials and fragments from your own visual culture to create a new aesthetic. No prior experience is necessary. Come play, construct, and paint!
The Play’s The Thing: Adventures on Page and Stage| Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
This workshop brings together the basics of 2 arts and humanities disciplines- literature and theater- to offer a fun and stimulating introduction to both. Students will examine literary texts, do creative writing and collaborative reading activities, and learn basic acting techniques to present the works.
This workshop focuses on examining how oral histories are collected and what they can and cannot tell us about the past. How can we use oral histories and personal testimonies to study two different historical racial regimes? What can we learn from comparing them? Through oral histories, students will explore how ideas about race in the Jim Crow United States and Nazi Germany in the 1930s were used to limit and deny the citizenship rights of Black Americans and German Jews. The key materials for this workshop come from Yale’s Fortunoff Archive of Holocaust Testimonies.
This dynamic workshop draws from ongoing research that recovers the essential role of Black people throughtout Yale and New Haven history. It puts back at the center of local storytelling people who have always been central to local history and celebrates Black community building, resistance, and resilience on campus and in New Haven.
Summer Verses: Exploring Poetry | Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
This workshop introduces themes and styles of contemporary American poetry with a focus on summer as a motif. Students will engage in reflective and creative writing exercises that draw inspiration from summer’s imagery and emotions.