Francis Hardy Gallery

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Even though many of us know about Door County's agricultural bounty, it might surprise some readers to learn that there is still a large group of migrant workers that arrive in early July to help harvest the large cherry crop. Because many of these migrant workers have young families, Gibraltar School District has hosted a Migrant Education Program since the 1960s, when thousands of migrant workers were needed to harvest Door County's cherry crop by hand. Since then, cherry picking machines have replaced most of the workers but the Door Peninsula still sees its share of migrant workers, and Gibraltar's program is still going strong. The program takes place over three weeks, and it ensures that migrant children benefit from the same free public education provided to other children in their age group.The Hardy Gallery's involvement with the Migrant Education Program dates back to the early 2000s. One of the components of the Hardy's mission has always been to enhance the creative enrichment of local youth, and the organization saw the opportunity to collaborate with Gibraltar on a series of arts-focused activities that would blend into their existing program and allow the students to explore their own personal creativity. The migrant children that are served in the program have fewer opportunities to engage in the arts than many of their peers, and the art lessons they do have ( if any, because for many this is their first introduction to formal art classes ) often lack one-on-one instruction. We developed a loose curriculum for the students and assembled several local artists and volunteers to help us execute the curriculum and Art Camp was born!Planning for Art Camp ( and the Gibraltar Migrant Program in general ) can be challenging the program hinges on when the cherry crop is ready to pick, and unfortunately, there's no magic date to schedule around! To give you a bit of insight, this year's Art Camp instructors, Door County artist Donna Brown ( who has selflessly given up many a July to teach the Art Camp program ) and our Hardy intern Beth Servais, solidified this year's Camp on a week's notice upon learning that the students would be starting school on July 11 a good two weeks ahead of schedule ( last year's program began the very end of July ) !