NCTE State Affiliate Extravaganza II: Michigan Council of Teachers of English MYAF Creative Writing Program

Discussion of the Michigan Council of Teachers of English Creative Writing program for high school students through the Michigan Youth Arts Festival

Afterschool Matters June 2010

High-Impact Afterschool for All: A Statewide Quality FrameworkBy Jennifer L. SiacaBuilding on increasing consensus on the definition of quality in afterschool programming, the New York State Afterschool Network developed a quality framework and related assessment tools that can be used to promote program quality. 6 pages. Getting the Right Mix: Sustainability and Resource Development Strategies in Out-of-School Time Youth Arts Programs in MassachusettsBy Christine ProffittA study of high-quality youth arts programs, supported by the literature on sustainability, suggests strategies OST programs can use to build a solid financial foundation. 8 pages. Project Exploration’s Sisters4Science: Involving Urban Girls of Color in Science Out of SchoolBy Gabrielle Lyon and Jameela JafriGetting girls from historically underrepresented groups involved in science means learning from the girls themselves and from girl-centered theory and practice. 9 pages. Promoting Physical Activity in Afterschool ProgramsBy Aaron Beighle, Michael W. Beets, Heather E. Erwin, Jennifer Huberty, Justin B. Moore, and Megan StellinoEven with limited space and equipment, afterschool programs can fight childhood obesity and contribute to the public health by promoting participation in physical activity. 9 pages. The Arts Matter in Afterschool: Community Youth Arts and Out-of-School TimeBy Lori L. HagerAwareness of the value of community youth arts could help support more formal partnerships between arts learning and afterschool organizations. 9 pages. Nana for a New GenerationBy Denise SellersThe author’s Nana was grandmother to an entire neighborhood of children. Today, her afterschool program fulfills a similar set of needs for 21st century children and their parents. 4 pages.https://repository.wellesley.edu/afterschoolmatters/1019/thumbnail.jp

Arts Education in Michigan: Fostering Creativity and Innovation

In the fall of 2011, Quadrant Arts Education Research, in partnership with Michigan Youth Arts, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the Michigan Department of Education, and ArtServe Michigan, began a statewide study of arts education in Michigan schools. The project was designed to create a never-before-available picture of arts education in Michigan and institute baseline information for tracking and measuring future progress. This landmark study provides essential data on student access, teacher training, assessment and accountability in arts education in K-12 schools in Michigan. The data provides the groundwork to drive future arts education policy decisions that effect all Michigan students.The principals of 4163 schools, including 718 private and 293 charter schools, were asked to complete an online survey detailing numerous building-level specifics on arts education in their schools

Negotiating cultural identity through the arts: Fitting in, third space and cultural memory

The article examines ways in which arts-based educational approaches were applied to a group of African descendant youth in Western Australia, as a way of understanding challenges to their bicultural socialization and means to developing their bicultural competence. Drawing on African cultural memory as a cultural resource enabled participants to discover the relevance of African cultural memory and embodied knowledge to their bicultural socialization and bicultural competence. The article challenges the argument that successful integration into dominant culture is only possible when migrants remain focused on acquisition of dominant cultural values – ‘Fitting in’. The African Cultural Memory Youth Arts Festival (ACMYAF) offered an alternative conception of successive integration as a process inclusive of creative appropriation and revaluation of ancestral culture through cultural memory. The festival became a third space through which the participants explored embodied knowledge and African cultural memory towards a positive self-concept and bicultural competence

The future of homegrown teaching artists? Negotiating contradictions of professionalization in the youth arts and humanities fields

Youth arts and humanities programs are providing invaluable learning opportunities for youth participants to become what we term “homegrown teaching artists.” After several years of artistic and pedagogic development, these alumni teach youth in the same programs where they were once participants. This phenomenon has emerged at the same time that the teaching artist field has become professionalized with new credentialed pathways through higher education. This simultaneity presents a paradox. Professionalization introduces formal standards and barriers to entry into the teaching artist field at the same time that teaching artists train youth who are racialized and low-income to become teaching artists through informal pathways in youth arts and humanities programs. In other words, the professionalization of the field is at odds with its aspiration to expand and sustain youth’s right to cultural self-determination. We address this contradiction by investigating the pathways and practices of three homegrown teaching artists before turning to implications for policy and practice

Barriers to Access : Report on the Barriers Faced by Young Disabled and D/deaf People in Accessing Youth Arts Provision in Scotland

This report outlines research that investigated the barriers faced by young disabled and D/deaf people in accessing youth arts provision in Scotland. Funded by the Time to Shine National Youth Arts Strategy for Scotland, the research was conducted by Dr. Matson Lawrence in conjunction with Birds of Paradise Theatre Company. The research relates to young people aged 0 – 25, with specific empirical focus on young people aged 16 – 25. Through in-depth interviews and online surveys, the research engaged with 20 disabled and D/deaf young people across Scotland, alongside a number of individuals working within the Scottish youth arts sector and in disability and D/deaf arts. The research found that young disabled and D/deaf people face multiple and intersecting barriers to accessing arts provision. Five main barriers were identified: 1. Finding suitable arts provision; 2. Availability of access information; 3. Lack of provision for access and support; 4. Travel, transport and location; and 5. Attitudes and awareness of arts providers. The research identified five key strategies to address these barriers: 1. Provision specifically for young disabled and D/deaf people; 2. Centralised information about arts opportunities; 3. Front Door to Stage Door Access provision; 4. Connections built with disabled and D/deaf communities across Scotland; and 5. Education and awareness for arts providers. These strategies offer arts providers concrete recommendations for improving disabled and D/deaf access. It is anticipated that, in light of this report, organisations and agencies providing arts opportunities to young people will be better informed of the barriers faced by young disabled and D/deaf people, and better equipped to address these barriers and improve access to their provision

Self-disclosure beyond 'vulnerability' : young people, musical biographies, technology and music-making

I sit across the table in a café, ready to begin my final interview with Julia, a young musician living with bipolar disorder who participated in this research. With a short-sleeved shirt on, her self-harm scars are obvious from the outset. As the interview continues, I begin to understand exactly how these scars are central to her music-making practice, one that involved disclosing personal stories of family mental illness. Often mediated through technology, music-making is used by Julia, as well as other young musicians, as a constructive means of engaging with personal vulnerability. Doing so enables processes of self-disclosure, which assist in the young person enacting a resilient identity. This thesis analyses the ways in which young musicians with experiences of vulnerability utilise both personal and musical biographies as part of a music-making practice that affords opportunities to manipulate, tailor and take charge of personal experience. The academic youth arts discourse assumes that young people with experiences of vulnerability are in deficit. As popularised by youth music-making initiatives, such an approach assumes that, through participating in an adult-run music-making program, the young person can move from vulnerability (deficit) to resilience (strength). Such programs elide the critical role music, as a cultural form, often plays in the lives and identities of vulnerable young people. Instead, programs position music merely as a youth engagement tool to govern and ultimately transform young people. This transformation narrative is in stark contrast with popular music discourse which romanticises stories of the tortured artist, celebrating musicians’ ongoing and continuous engagement with personal vulnerability as part of practice. This work entails a two-stage ethnographic methodology. Stage One consists of interviews with 13 young musicians with experiences of vulnerability and two youth arts professionals. Stage Two involves a series of three follow up case-study interviews with five of the young musicians who participated in Stage One. When speaking with young musicians, I utilised a ‘version of friendship as method’, an adaptation of Tillman-Healy’s ‘friendship as method’. Doing so generated experiences that could be situated in dialogue with existing youth arts discourse. This methodology also afforded new opportunities for understanding young musicians’ life worlds. Through an analysis of my empirical material, this thesis argues that young musicians with experiences of vulnerability use music-making as a means of self-disclosure; a practice that involves a continuous interplay of vulnerability and resilience as mediated through technology, personal experience and musical biography. To make this argument, I analyse the experiences of the young musicians with whom I worked through a dialogue with a range of literature, including youth arts, vulnerability and resilience studies, technology studies, and fandom and subcultures research. In particular, I build on Frith’s call for a focus within cultural studies on individual cultural practices, and I draw on Hesmondhalgh’s contention that music involves both individual and collective practices - often at the same time - to suggest that the neo-liberal focus on individualisation is deeply embedded in the lives of young musicians, especially those with lived experiences of vulnerability. However, as I demonstrate, these individual practices are embedded in strong social and collective networks. Within these contexts, young musicians with experiences of vulnerability engage in music-making practices, which afford opportunities for self-disclosure. These practices, in return, facilitate a fluid and non-linear engagement with vulnerability, which allow participants to enact a resilient self. Calling young musicians’ experiences into dialogue with the existing dominant discourse surrounding vulnerability and resilience, this thesis argues against the transformation narrative that characterises much youth arts practice. Such an approach also has implications for methodology, suggesting that specific and contextualised approaches need to complement the broad categorical approaches to understanding youth practice. In this way, this thesis complements and extends the existing youth arts discourse

Using digital storytelling as a methodology for the introduction of socially responsible graphic design in a University Bachelor of Computer Graphic Design Programme

This paper case studies the pedagogical methodology for a digital storytelling project involving final semester Bachelor of Computer Graphic Design students and students from a community based charitable arts trust. A young artist is paired with a senior tertiary graphic design student to create digital narratives that attempt to remain within the spirit of the original goals of the Digital Storytelling Movement. The project aims to introduce socially responsible graphic design to tertiary computer graphic design students and foundation arts students. Discussion of the learning outcomes of this project, including analysis of the results of the personal breakthroughs made by students as seen in their written accounts in project completion surveys are detailed

You Want to Be A Part of Everything: The Arts, Community, and Learning

The report features provocative testimony to youth centered and youth directed arts programs that are creating powerful and supportive communities among young people. It highlights five youth arts programs from across the country brought together at an AEP forum in September, 2003. Youth and adult representatives engaged participants in activities that reflect the role of the arts in building positive learning communities