How AANHPI Youth in Denver Built Community Through Art
Community grows through shared experience, care, and intention.
During Asian Girls Ignite’s 2025 RepresentAsian Matters summer program, held at the Denver Botanic Gardens with their generous sponsorship, AGI students explored the theme “I Am Powerful” through immersive, hands-on experiences rooted in storytelling, reflection, and connection. Each day invited students to explore a different lens of personal and collective empowerment through creative activities, community building, and engagement with AANHPI storytellers.
Each summer, students also take part in a community art project. This annual practice brings identity, story, and connection into shared form. Growth becomes visible and meaning carries forward.
How the Community Art Project Took Shape
Centered on the day’s theme, connection and community, students began by creating individual woven pieces to reflect lived experience, values, or identity. Guided by Hue Helen Nguyen, Caregiver of People and Plants, the group then joined each piece into one connected form.
Each student created a woven piece to represent a lived experience, value, or part of identity. Once complete, the group connected every piece into a single shared work.
Before the weaving began, Helen shared guidance grounded in lived experience.
“The advice I would get the students as they seek out and create their own community is to be as authentically yourself as possible. And I know that’s hard, all the rules and stereotypes and barriers in the world. But I promise you if you follow your passion, or if you show up as authentic as you can, you’ll find a community that looks up to you as you are. So just be yourself and you’ll be loved just as you are.”
Students carried this guidance into the making. Choices reflected personal meaning. Individual stories stayed visible within the shared form.
Connection in Practice
The weaving unfolded side by side. Colors crossed paths. Textures layered. Knots appeared. Links formed.
Each piece remained distinct while contributing to the whole. The work reflected connection built through attention, care, and shared effort.
Seeing the Work Through Family Eyes
The finished piece was shared during the community picnic, offering parents and guardians a window into how students experienced the program across the week. Annabel, AGI Program Coordinator, reflected on the work as families gathered around it.
Annabel shared that as this was being put together, it was easy to think that it looked messy, however, it actually fit together… perfectly. The “mess” of each thread shows that there’s so many things connecting us together that we don’t even know at face value, so this messy, beautiful piece embraces all our differences and shows our strength as come together as a community.
In that moment, growth showed up through presence and relationship. The piece reflected how students built connection, held difference, and found meaning together.
A Gift That Carries Stories Forward
At the close of the program, the collective weaving was gifted to Annie Guo VanDan, Founder and Executive Director of Colorado Asian Culture and Education Network.
The exchange reflected shared values across organizations. Story as care, art as connection, and community as ongoing practice. The piece now lives at The Social Fabric Hub (also founded by Annie!)within a space dedicated to uplifting community stories.
Annie, thank you for all you do in, for, and alongside our community. We are grateful for your leadership, care, and commitment.
The annual community art project reflects how the summer program operates as an experience rooted in storytelling, identity exploration, and connection. Through shared responsibility, students step into leadership together, build confidence through being seen, and create meaning through collective creation.
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