Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms

Lily Yeh is an internationally celebrated artist who has worked with communities in Rwanda, China, Ecuador, Haiti, Ghana, Kenya, Syria, Italy and across the United States. She founded Barefoot Artists, a volunteer organization that uses the power of art to revitalize impoverished neighborhoods. Lily Yeh is the renowned co-founder of The Village of Arts and Humanities that has brought to life over 200 abandoned lots in the most distressed districts of North Philadelphia. She has been given many prestigious awards and six honorary doctorates.

Awakening Creativity is a radical manifesto for social change through art. Lily Yeh is a transformational artist. Yes, she employs pencils, paper, paints and paintbrushes, and all manner of objects to create her world-welcoming mosaics. But the art Lily Yeh is most interested in is the art of living. She is a builder, an organizer, an alchemist, and a healer who is drawn to the broken places on the planet from Rwanda to Haiti to her own ancestral home in China. It is here in the open wounds of the world that she finds what is beautiful through the inspiration of those who live there; human beings reaching through the pain of poverty and war to create art which creates joy which is why first and foremost, Lily Yeh is a peacemaker. Follow her work and you will follow the path of transformation.
—Terry Tempest Williams

This is the first book authored by Lily Yeh, internationally beloved artist and social pioneer. Through vibrant color photography and Lily’s words, we watch the metamorphosis of a school environment for migrant workers’ children who, but for this charity, would receive no education.

An angel of beauty and hope, Lily engages middle-school students, their teachers, and local elders in converting a barren factory space in Beijing, China, into the Dandelion School’s colorful, mosaic-covered youthscape. Lives and curriculum become suffused with the creative spirit. The book is a testament to crafting joy, as Lily guides a participatory process of artistic expression that uplifts a distressed community and offers an inspiring model for educators around the world.

When I see brokenness, poverty, and crime in inner cities, I also see the enormous potential and readiness for transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people’s lives. It also expresses joy, beauty, and love.
—Lily Yeh