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“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Let Mahatma Gandhi’s words inspire you!  The profits from the production of this paperweight are being donated to New Urban Arts, a nationally recognized arts studio for high school students and emerging artists in Providence, Rhode Island.  Their mission is to build a vital learning community that empowers young people, developing creative practices they can sustain throughout their lives.

Here’s what one high school student said about New Urban Arts’ program last year: “I walked into this place and immediately feel a sense of goodness, of belonging, a sense of comfort.  Since I stepped into the studio, my passion for the arts grew very fast.  I had the opportunity to meet mentors, I found myself learning how to be better at drawing and painting, I started to communicate better with other students, and the most important part:I became part of the big family at New Urban Arts.”

Each "Be the Change" paperweight is $35 and $5 for shipping and handling. You can also stop by New Urban Arts and purchase one for $35.

Each paperweight comes in a box with a paper insert with information about New Urban Arts and how the purchase supports the organization. Makes a great gift.

*If you would like to purchase multiple paperweights, please contact us directly and we will send you an invoice.

Paperweight Insert:

A kaleidoscope of emotions and ideas
group and regroup,
like whirling eddies in a flowing river
that delve into each other,

like a kid playing
and changing the way I view the world.

No one is alone
among people of imagination
caring about ideas
capable of making change.

In one way or another
we all dance

to reflect and meditate,
a result of certain restlessness,
a feeling of certain wrongness with the world.
Oh, I can do all the things

I have wanted to do,
becoming a more creative space,

a myriad of scenes and perceptions
overlapping one another.

I love pink and things that are soft,
things I’ve seen in my travels,

my father’s oral histories,
the flow of immigration to America,

an aesthetic as that of an 11-year-old-girl.
Sometimes, I have an end
and I work.
Sometimes, I have a begining,

and I see where it goes.
Directions change,

like lead wanting to become gold,
Kind of proud of that sometimes, too.
I don’t expect anyone
to distill me in one language.

I wish I could better describe this feeling,
but I think I’ll do it a little better visually.

collective poem created by students at New Urban Arts, 2004