Awakening Creativity shows in gloriously illustrated detail how Lily Yeh guides a participatory process of artistic expression that uplifts a distressed community. Her open, joyful approach to artmaking is a model for building healthy cultural esteem. Lily Yeh is an acclaimed visual artist who has worked with students, community leaders and teachers in Canada, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Syria, Italy and in cities and neighborhoods across the United States. Yeh is considered one of America's most innovative urban designers and social pioneers. Awakening Creativity is her first, much-awaited book. In Awakening Creativity, Yeh facilitates the art-making process for students of The Dandelion School, the only nonprofit organization in Beijing that serves the children of poor migrant workers coming from 24 provinces. Yeh worked with hundreds of students, teachers, volunteers and workers to transform the school's main campus with mural painting, mosaics, and environmental sculpture. Students were involved in every aspect of the art-making, which has become central to the school's curriculum and well-being. Lily Yeh founded Barefoot Artists, a volunteer organization that uses the power of art to revitalize impoverished communities. Yeh is also the co-founder and former director of The Village of Arts and Humanities that has brought to life over 200 abandoned lots in the most distressed districts of North Philadelphia.

Demonstrates the power of art in the service of healing Healing from Genocide in Rwanda demonstrates the power of art in the service of healing, and is a testimony to responsive community process in a highly sensitive environment. The work immerses readers in the stories of two Rwandans who as small children experienced the 1994 Genocide. It tells of the horrific tragedy each survived, the courage necessary for surviving, and the humanity they embody. Their stories are framed by two chapters chronicling the transformation, in the Rugerero Survivors' Village, of a concrete burial slab into a powerful Genocide Memorial with its bone chamber, designed by artist Lily Yeh and built by the villagers. The book is not limited to the literature of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, but belongs to the world as part of the collective human experience. It evokes its world through images (photographs, drawings, paintings, pattern, and color) as well as words. The text itself is visually choreographed. The work draws from Lily Yeh's multifaceted Rwandan Healing Project under the auspices of Barefoot Artists, a project that included, among other things, drawing and storytelling workshops. Susan Viguers conceived and designed the book, incorporating drawings and paintings by Lily Yeh.

This book explores how creativity and the expressive arts can be therapeutic for refugees and survivors of natural disasters, poverty, war, pandemic and genocide. Artists and therapists behind group art projects worldwide reveal how art enables people to come together, find their voices and learn how to narrate their stories after traumatic experiences. They offer insight into the challenges they encountered and explain the theory, curricula and practice of their approaches. The case studies reflect a wide range of projects, including work with survivors of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa, Syrian war refugees in Jordan and survivors of the tsunami in Sri Lanka.