Alumni Spotlight - Down To Specifics With Artist Julia Hall

Julia Hall
Professional Artist
Team Leader of City Year Greater Philadelphia Youth Corps
Joe Banner Starfish Award Winner

By Reneé Di Pietro

Vine swinging monsters. Light house halos. A hungry caterpillar. Where the Wild Things Are? Julia Hall will show you.

She arms herself for life by seeking out as many different perspectives as possible, and surrounding herself with diversity in all its forms. Being a native of South Jersey and New York City, Julia grew up spending her weekends in museums. After she attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and graduated as a painting major, she has had her art work featured in numerous galleries, museums and universities. Julia also has had opportunities to work under premier sculptors, antique restorers, painters, and woodworkers, which is a profession her father shares.

“The hands-on approach helps one master artistic skills,” she says.

So how did this artist end up at City Year for a second year of service? Julia is currently the team leader for the Young Heroes Youth Corps.

“I decided to serve two years because I wanted to give back to the city of Philadelphia, which has been my home off and on for about eight years,” she says.

Julia originally arrived in Philadelphia for schooling but also chose the city because she was inspired by William Penn and his ideals, founding the city on equalities, liberties, green spaces and a political utopia setting that guaranteed free and fair trials.

“I went to Quaker school as a child,” she says. “I grew up hearing a lot of the City Year founding stories.” Her favorite is the story of The Traveler.

“It’s an interesting play on perspective and how you get what you expect [out of life].”

For the past two years Julia has been focusing on her students’ expectations for themselves and using unique methods to challenge and support them—specializing each method for each student. She believes that every person needs specific tools to build the life that he or she envisions. Therefore when Julia walked into Jay Cooke Elementary School in North Philadelphia last year, she immediately focused on finding out about each of her students’ desired career paths. She wanted to make sure that by the end of the year, these students could have the tools that they would need to walk these paths.

“Two of the largest hurdles to overcome last year were the absent of a school art program and changing students’ perceptions of themselves, their self worth and potential,” Julia says.

She went to work at once and asked all her sixth grade students where they wanted to attend high school. Many responded the neighborhood school, Olney High School. Other students did not know where and had never thought of other options. Over Thanksgiving break, Julia spent her free time researching every high school option possible for the students and diagrammed out a summary sheet for each school including its academic requirements, its strengths, its special programs and focuses. She shared this information back with the undecided students and next asked about what career paths interested them. Armed with a new list to research, she again diagrammed each of these careers, what they are, what their life paths look like, and what is it now that these students could be doing to prepare themselves for these careers.

“I took my students out of the classroom for one on one time to work on clarifying their ambitions. I explained that the more one prepares, the more attainable everything becomes,” she says. “I would give them customized step-by-step goal sheets outlining what they needed to do and where they needed to do it to reach the top. If a student said they wanted to be a doctor, I would ask, ‘What kind of doctor?’”

Specificity. Julia continues today to support students to specifically see what their futures can hold for them, particularly with one of her students from last year. She knows she has reached him, especially in focusing on his future.

“He is one of my students that I have formed one of my strongest bonds with. We have a pact that I will continue pestering him until he graduates from Yale, or MIT or Harvard.” she says. “This pact is the thing I will carry with me after I am done serving this year, and something I take very seriously. I plan to help him get scholarships and to do my best to nurture his dreams.”

“The students I work with deserve people to stay in their lives, even when things get tough,” she notes. “My main goal in life now is to continue helping kids to realize that they are special, and that they hold all the tools they need to achieve great things in the future.” Julia understands that she is working on a micro level but believes her actions are combining with other little pushes towards something bigger – “my students’ futures.”

For another part of her service last year, Julia worked with students and community members to create murals for outside of their school. For the initiate phase of the project, she sought out community involvement and ideas. She asked neighbors about their perspectives on art and how they viewed the neighborhood. The community loved being asked and welcomed Julia’s lively, colorful murals. They have thanked her for brightening up the neighborhood and for caring as she does.

“The Logan community has touched my heart, and the talent of its citizens has been driving force in everything I did last year,” Julia says.

Julia’s vision is that the Logan community becomes a “Mecca for artistic and scientific thought.” She hopes this area of the city will stand as an example of successful public education one day.

“This goal can only be achieved if the young people of this community believe in themselves and are exposed to the tools they need to put their goals into action,” she says. Making it evident as to why Julia starts with her students’ career paths first.

“She has an uncommon drive to help people,” says Chrissy Leggio, a close friend to Julia and current artist and graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. “She is kind and helpful, always with deep sincerity.”

“I love helping students forge their own paths the same way that others helped me to build my own,” Julia says.  “My life plan has changed because of my time with City Year. I am now more interested in artistic mediums that reach a larger public audience as opposed to a select group of viewers. I am interested in creating more murals, public art projects, and also a children’s book series.”

Her mural art project ideas are not only for local eyes. Julia envisions a mural project yet to be done that spans from ocean to ocean of the country. “It would be a common thread to follow on a road trip that revealed or focused on some part of our history,” she says as she is still playing with the idea.

Today, Julia is looking forward to the current projects she is doing with her students through the Young Heroes program.

“The best part about my week is the student alumni program we run after school called Stop Motion. The kids are making art projects and working on scripts for their projects,” she says.

Julia explains how the program is teaching kids a new filming process of taking a photo and moving one thing in the photo slightly different before taking the next photograph. Similar to the techniques used to create the drawings and animations for the television show South Park.

Julia was the recipient of the Joe Banner Starfish Award last year, given each year to an exceptional, graduating corps member from the City Year Greater Philadelphia Alumni Board. She is using part of her award funds towards the Stop Motion projects that her students are creating and it is her hope to enter these projects into contests that could result in her students receiving money for college.

“It is a long shot,” she says, “but I think it will be worth trying because they’re doing such a great job with the animation.”

With dreams of her own, Julia’s looks forward to changing up her original future goals. Instead of pursuing a fine arts path, she hopes to attend graduate school next year for leadership in nonprofit management. She would like to take her career into an artistic direction and focus on public works of art. Julia thinks she will be in Philadelphia for a while but also can see herself one day in California doing work there. Wherever she will be, it is certain that she will continue to view the world through more than one or two lenses. She will see something some of us miss, the multitude of paths possible to anyone when given the correct tools to build.


To nominate an amazing alumni that you know, please email Reneé Di Pietro at cygpalumni@gmail.com


Alumni Highlight Quick Box: Julia Hall
Q: What is your favorite book or movie? Why?
A: My favorite book is Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, because of its humanist philosophy.

Q: What was your favorite City Year founding story? Why?
A: I have a lot of favorites; many of the stories are ones I grew up hearing, so this is a tough question. My ultimate favorite story is the Traveler. I like the point it makes that your perspective is everything.

Q: How many City Year sites do you predict will be open by 2020?
A: I hope that by the year 2020 City Year has at least 35 domestic sites.  

Q: Where would you like to see one?
A: I would like to see a site open up in Camden, New Jersey.

Q: What skills or qualities do you believe are your strengths?
A: My strengths are my work ethic, my tenacity, creativity, and my openness.

Q: What five things make you unique?
A:  I have actively sought out a life of variety, which has led me to a collection of experiences that are unique to me.  My artistic point of view, sense of humor, dreams, memories, and ideas are what are most unique to me.

Q: What has been your proudest moment in life?
A: I don’t have a singular proudest moment, but the thing I am most proud of has been maintaining the friendships and relationships I have made over the course of my life.