About

The Creative Arts and Restorative Education Program (C.A.R.E.) works to build community, empower artists, and encourage self-discovery through mural making, hands-on workshops, and community art projects.

C.A.R.E. started in 2022 at Julia de Burgos Elementary School in Fairhill, Philadelphia. At the time, Julia Gutman, founder of C.A.R.E., was working there as an AmeriCorps ArtistYear Fellow.  Artist Year is a program that works to address the inequalities in arts education in Title I schools. In talking with students and staff at de Burgos, Julia learned that both shared the same hope for the school: to build community and create an environment for learning where students thrive. For students, this meant having extracurricular activities and time to socialize outside the classroom. For staff, this meant having support and resources. At the time, there were no extracurricular activities available and limited social-emotional support for students. As a result, Julia decided to start C.A.R.E. to address both of these issues. 

Initially, C.A.R.E. consisted of mural projects, social-emotional student groups, and extracurricular arts programs. These programs built community, promoted self-discovery, and encouraged creativity among students through restorative art-making. Unlike art therapy and traditional fine arts classes, restorative art-making is not a clinical, therapeutic practice or one that focuses on traditional art techniques. Our restorative art-making workshops focus on the physical process of creating and experimenting, offering opportunities to reflect on experiences, build community, encourage self-discovery, develop self-care practices, honor identity, cultivate creativity, and gain autonomy. During its first year, C.A.R.E. had roughly 300 students participating weekly, created two murals, hosted four social-emotions circles daily, and offered three extracurricular programs weekly. 

From 2023 to 2025, the C.A.R.E. program went on a brief hiatus as Julia was hired as a full-time Digital Media teacher at de Burgos. During those two years, Julia learned an incredible amount about the education system itself, gained immense experience teaching students with diverse learning styles, and developed a renewed understanding of the importance of restorative art-making. 

In the summer of 2025, the C.A.R.E. Program started up again after receiving funding and forming a partnership with an organization in Malaga, Spain. C.A.R.E. went international! Now, C.A.R.E. works, in collaboration with INCIDE, to build community, empower artists, and encourage self-discovery through mural-making, hands-on workshops, and community art projects.