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

Cultivating Abolitionist Praxis through Healing-Centered Engagement in Social Justice Youth Arts Programs

This is a critical-phenomenological interview-based study in which young people who participated in Social Justice Youth Arts (SJYA) programs during their teenage years engaged in a series of semi-structured interviews focused on recollecting their lived experiences in those programs and the years since. These interviews investigate the ways in which the principles of Healing-Centered Engagement (Ginwright, 2018) were present within these young people’s experiences of those programs, as well as the extent to which those experiences may have encouraged or cultivated a lived praxis of the principles of the contemporary abolitionist movement (Kaba, 2021; Kaepernick, 2021). This study describes how these young people’s engagement with SJYA programming encouraged their process of identity formation as artists and activists, and how the durability and evolution of those self-identifications manifested in their broader social and behavioral context over time. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu)

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

A Qualitative Study of Adult Perspectives of Loyola Marymount’s Summer Arts Workshop

This research is a qualitative exploration of the impacts of Loyola Marymount’s Summer Arts Workshop from the perspective of the youth participant’s teachers and caregivers. The intention of this research was to compare findings in the literature of similar youth arts programs to LMU’s through examination of a previously unexplored perspective. Data was collected through an arts based focus group as well as paper-pencil questionnaires including both Likert scale and open ended questions. Themes emerged through thorough analysis of all data collected and presented both themes of specific program impacts and opportunities for future program improvements. The findings of this research further illuminate established assertions found within the literature of prosocial impacts produced within youth participation in community arts programs. Additionally upon expansion of emergent themes, the researcher established the findings of LMU’s Summer Arts Program to positively impact adolescents and identity development, generate gains in social capital and produce positive community impacts through art making

Programming and Researching With Youth in Cultural Institutions – a Brief Reflection on a Cross-Institutional Youth Advisory Board

This brief report describes the operational processes and participatory methods involved in setting up, managing and mediating a cross-institutional youth advisory board. Youth advisory boards in museums give young people opportunities to co-program with and for their peers, as well as to have an active and visible role inside institutions. Framed by the research project Youth in Museums, the youth advisory board Listening Lab – Youth, Culture, Participation, was co-organized and developed with five cultural institutions in Lisbon, Portugal. These included the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), BoCA – Biennal of Contemporary Art, Casa da Cerca – Contemporary Art Centre, LU.CA – Luís de Camões Theatre and the Municipal Galleries. Young people, aged 15 to 25, were invited to participate in group roundtables to discuss specific issues related to youth arts programs. In the sessions with the youth advisory board I combined a semi-structured approach with participatory methods that activated collective processes of meaning making.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pivoting Rural Community-Based Fine Arts Programs for Youth Due to a Global Pandemic

This personal experience essay features five women professors who, as engaged scholars, seek to continuously respond to the needs of their local community by volunteering their time and expertise to offer educational programs that focus on creative arts and academic assistance for K–12 students. This piece explores the opportunities and obstacles we experienced in using virtual platforms, during the 2020 global pandemic, in order to re-envision our civic responsibilities to engage communities beyond our previous place-based programs

2009 Impact Report

Summarizes the impact of the foundation's 2009 discretionary community investments in education, health, arts and culture, community and economic development, and human services, as well as its Initiative for Nonprofit Excellence. Includes plans for 2010

Catalytic Funding, Partnership, Evaluation, and Advocacy: Innovation Strategies for Community Impact

With long-term commitments to concentrated geographic regions, community foundations are in a unique position to highlight problems and stimulate other nonprofit organizations and funders to develop local solutions. Seizing an opportunity to address a growing community concern over cutbacks in youth arts education, the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region undertook an initiative that utilized several innovation strategies in a way that would impact the community and its own work. This article describes how the foundation combined catalytic funding, partnership with grantees, creative use of evaluation, and design of advocacy tools to promote and strengthen youth arts programming. The partnership approach gave rise to very different working relationships with grantees, moving the foundation away from its traditional role to one that led to shared ownership among all the collaborative partners. The initiative included significant use of a variety of evaluation approaches, including needs assessment, evaluation capacity-building, and developmental evaluation. The experience with this innovative project positioned the foundation to pursue future community-impact initiatives even more effectively, and this article concludes with eight insights for others interested in using innovative methods to lead large initiatives designed for broad community impact