How do we keep hope close to us?
The Lewiston Is Our Hope Project is about pieces of hope that bind us together. This project began with a simple recognition.
Hope already lives here.
How It Unfolded
A Lewiston resident and psychologist, Yun Garrison, was inspired by the steady, everyday hope she witnessed among her neighbors and people around her—community leaders, long-time residents, newcomers, families, workers, elders, children, and young people. Even through difficult times, hope continues to take root in daily life. Her long-term partnership with Fowsia Musse, including Musse’s work on City of Us and their shared work Ka Bogso (Be Healed), inspired her to imagine new possibilities.
Yun invited Bates College psychology students—Kelly Saldana, Claudia Klingbeil, Reynold Huard, Sophia Ramsey, and Anna Luka —and a senior thesis student (Mo Mcquire), whose shared value of community shaped their involvement in the project.
The project is grounded in community-engaged and art-based research. Rather than studying the community from a distance, it listens to and works alongside community members. The project, in both its making and its final form, creates art and an installation and digital archive that belong to the Lewiston community. Lewiston people’s hope is what shaped this project.
Our team used wood circles for the project. They are made from Maine-grown wood, connecting the art directly to the land beneath our feet.
Art and Archive
Hope is not manufactured. It is what each of us cultivates from moment to moment and heart-to-heart experiences. The artwork takes on organic shapes, resisting perfection, mass production, and uniform molds. As the organic wood circle embodies, hope grows in its own form—uneven and uniquely shaped by each person and each story.
It is a collective effort rooted in care for our Lewiston neighbors. This website holds our community archive—the images drawn by many hands and the stories shared from the heart.
In fall 2025, Yun and her team facilitated 47 community drop-in art tables and workshops to invite various people to share their reflections, stories, and visions for Lewiston.
During each workshop, participants drew their hopes for Lewiston on wood circles, where they took shape in colors, lines, and symbols.
Participants were invited to give their hope a voice in a one-minute audio-recorded reflection. Some chose to speak, and some chose to hold their hope quietly. Both were honored. Some shared their names, and others chose to remain anonymous, finding comfort in belonging to the whole without needing to stand alone.
Through collective art-making, these shared hopes are transformed into something tangible—something we can see or hear and return to. Art becomes a way to remember, to connect, and to process what we as a community carry, protect, and dream.
400 people participated in the Lewiston is Our Hope Project, with their ages ranging from 2 to 95 years old.
Community Voices
Community Advisory Board
Bridgette Bartlett
Carl Sheline
Courtney Reed-Marsh
Deanna Ehrhardt
Fowsia Musse
Joseph C. Houston
Khadija Ali
Morgan Kinney
Sarah Gillespie
Sheri Withers
Our team received feedback from a community advisory board formed for the Lewiston Is Our Hope Project to more fully reflect community voices and vision.
Core values that emerged from the discussion included empathy, inclusion, respect, celebrating togetherness, bringing arts into relationships and connection, representation, and mutual understanding.
These values guided our actions in concrete ways:
practicing deep listening and honoring each person’s expression,
including all submitted artworks rather than selecting only a few,
reaching out to diverse leaders and community members across Lewiston.
choosing accessible community spaces for participation,
creating space for organic conversations about hope to emerge,
designing the final composition to reflect togetherness without rigidity.
creating a community archive that is accessible beyond the physical art form,
archiving photos of arts and stories carefully and ethically,
gathering anonymous demographics to understand who participated, and
creating community events for celebration and continued dialogue.
Community Collaborators
Over 20 groups in Lewiston supported this project by bringing their community members, spreading the word, and opening their spaces to our team.
ArtVan
Bates College students from classes taught by Professors Elena Maker-Castro, Temitope Noah, and Ian-Khara Ellasante.
Ellard Studio
Gather to Grow
Harward Center Bonner Fellows
High Street Congregational Church
Le Ronji
LA Arts
Lewiston Farmers’ Market
Lewiston Housing
Lewiston Public Library
Lewiston Together
New Beginnings
Maine Community Integration
Maine Resiliency Center
Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services (MEIRS)
Mellissa Hoskins
Montello Heights
Munka Studio
Spurwink
University of Southern Maine Lewiston-Auburn Campus
YWCA-Central Maine
Contact us
Curious about the project and how the community art and story archive could inspire future community ideas in Lewiston?