The Benji Project Launches Spring Art Intensive to Boost Youth Creativity and Support Mental Health

There’s this big, fun art project out there. It’s free, it’s fully funded, it’s in the near future and it has a well-seasoned professional artist leading the way. Most key: The thing calls for an ensemble of 12 to 15 middle and high school students. 

This is the Spring Arts Intensive, presented by The Benji Project, a nonprofit organization offering mindfulness education for young people. The intensive begins March 26 and culminates in an interactive public event in May with Thaddeus Jurczynski, the well-known Port Townsend sculptor and teaching artist, serving as the guide. He and the participating students will build their own adventure: maybe a big, joyous puppet, perhaps a flock of handcrafted masks, maybe original skits, maybe something yet to be imagined. 

Along the way, the kids—ages 12 to 18—will have time to tap into their creative voices, said Benji Project Executive Director Heather McRae-Woolf. The Spring Arts Intensive uses art making to support young people’s mental health, she added, while giving the students a way to connect with the community. 

Funding for the intensive comes from a two-year $20,000 grant from the Washington State Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts—which means it is offered at no cost to the youths and their families. The first three sessions on March 26, April 2 and April 9, will be held at Port Townsend High School; then the project will move into the Jefferson County Fairgrounds 4-H Building. That building will also be the venue for the Spring Arts Intensive’s public event at 6 p.m. May 8. 

The time to sign up is now, at https://www.thebenjiproject.org/. 

“We’ve been leaning more and more into the arts, which are such a beautiful tool for youth exploring themselves, and exploring mental health,” said McRae-Woolf. She and Benji Project instructors Rose Martin and Eden Trenor are Spring Arts Intensive guides alongside Jurczynski. 

The program begins with fun: lighthearted games where everybody gets to relax and get to know one another. Then the art will start to take shape. 

Jurczynski, who has taught in the Port Townsend area for more than three decades, previously worked with the Benji Project to create the jumbo cat puppet that has appeared at various community events since 2024. In its multicolored coat, the cat represents mental health: complicated, moody, comforting. 

Jurczynski said he looks forward to collaborating with the Benji staff and seeing what this year’s students come up with. Creating a piece of art together, he said, gives people not only a chance to learn new skills, but also new ways of expressing themselves. 

“Being neuro-spicy myself, I strive to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued,” the artist added. Neuro-spicy is another way of saying neurodivergent, a term that describes people whose brains work differently from the typical. 

The Spring Arts Intensive, with its public event, is a way to bring the topic of mental health forward for the whole community, McRae-Woolf noted. 

“All of us have peaks and valleys in our mental and emotional states,” she said, while all of us have challenges now and again. The Benji Project aims to support people through helping them learn tools, internal and external, to care for themselves and one another. 

McRae-Woolf encourages all community members to come to the May 8 public event. You will not only see the students’ vision turned into reality, she said. You also can plan on learning about the young people in your midst: what their challenges are, how they see the world. 

“I do think sometimes kids in Port Townsend can feel invisible,” she said. A teenager may wonder: “How am I seen? How am I witnessed in my community?”

“We aren’t just a retirement community. We are many things,” she said, adding, “We are trying to make young people more visible to the whole community.”