The trio of art, education, and community drive a powerful partnership at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design’s Center for Creative Exploration. The Center’s Director, Natalie Lascek, and Program Coordinator Salina Almanzar-Oree work to build programming that enables creativity at every age. These women spread their experience not only through CCE, but also through their contributions to other boards and community projects throughout the region. From festivals to libraries, retirement homes to classrooms, their impact spans the Susquehanna.
Together they create popular youth summer camps and intergenerational classes that bring families together in art-making. They host Art Recess lunch breaks in Lancaster City and Mind Mapping activities in York. They coordinate art activities in Lancaster’s Art Alley and Art at Brunch at Zoetropolis. Their playful energy draws in children of all ages to make and create.
They are also champions of continuing education, programming professional certificate programs in design, marketing, and entrepreneurship, as well as inspiring middle and high school students with rich coursework to prepare them for college.
Almanzar-Oree, a native of Lancaster, recently was named one of five 2022 YWCA Lancaster Women of Achievement honorees. Devoted to Creative Placemaking in the Lancaster Latinx community, she is a co-facilitator of the Latino Empowerment Project and has served as a teaching artist in Lancaster City parks through Lancaster Public Art and as founder of Taller Pa’lante, a Lancaster-based art and placemaking organization.
Lascek is the College’s 2022 winner of the Trustees’ Award for Staff Excellence, and Vice President of the Board at Lancaster Creative Reuse, an organization that connects excess creative materials with those who can use them. Lascek is ingenious when it comes to connecting creatives throughout Lancaster and beyond. Being involved, she says, “has helped to form (CCE’s) partnered work with the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen, the Lancaster Museum of Art/Demuth Foundation, Lancaster Science Factory, and Gallery Grow.”
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