Lily Yeh

Lily Yeh
Lily Yeh in 2013
Born	1941 (age 75–76) Guizhou, China
Nationality	Chinese American
Education	University of Pennsylvania School of Design National Taiwan University
Movement	Urban Alchimist
Awards	Daughter of Greatness Award (2015) ATLAS Gold Medal of Honor (2010) Leadership for a Changing World Award, Ford Foundation (2003) Rudy Bruner Gold Medal Award (2001) Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1992)
Website	barefootartists.org

Lily Yeh (born 1941, Guizhou, China) is an artist whose work has taken her to communities throughout the world. She grew up in Taiwan and moved to the United States in 1963 to attend the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts. She was a professor of painting and art history at University of the Arts (Philadelphia) from 1968 until 1998. As founder and executive director of The Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia from 1968 to 2004, she helped create a national model in creative place-making and community building through the arts. In 2002, Yeh pursued her work internationally, founding Barefoot Artists, Inc., to bring the transformative power of art to impoverished communities around the globe through participatory, multifaceted projects that foster community empowerment, improve the physical environment, promote economic development and preserve indigenous art and culture. In addition to the United States, she has carried out projects in several other countries.

She is the subject of the feature-length documentary film The Barefoot Artist directed by Glenn Holsten and Daniel Traub. Yeh has been included in the Asian American Arts Centre's artasiamerica digital archive.

Lily Yeh co-founded The Village of Arts and Humanities in 1989. The project began as a simple park-building project in North Philadelphia in 1986 involving neighborhood children, and developed into a private, nonprofit, community-based organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization through the arts. By 2004, the Village had become a professional organization with an annual budget of $1.3 million and a dedicated staff of sixteen full-time and ten part-time employees including a four-person construction crew. During the last decade of her sojourn, the organization has yearly served over thousands of low-income, primarily African-American youth and families, covering several neighborhoods within a 260 square block area in North Philadelphia and transformed more than 120 vacant lots into gardens and parks. They have also renovated vacant homes, creating art workshops, a youth theater and educational programs.