Community Arts

Goal 1- We did “provide children from low income families and who have had limited to no exposure to the arts, with a high quality, sustained, hands-on creative learning experience.” Over ten afternoons during the first two weeks of August children had sustained daily opportunities and repeated opportunities over the ten days to devise, create, and execute a circus-themed project. BareBones Productions brought their unique multi-faceted approach to bringing out the energy, creativity and curiosity in every participant. They did this by using a themed approach and designing processes that use many techniques and have many hands-on opportunities, by engaging gross-motor and fine-motor skills in alternation, and by creating large collaborative pieces that require many hands to complete. The biggest process challenge is to accommodate the developmental levels of all participants and to keep everyone engaged throughout each session, especially the very youngest children. This is accomplished by having multiple activities occurring at multiple stations simultaneously and having frequent rotations between stations. It is also accomplished by giving children choices as to what activities they want to engage in. Goal 2. “Children will develop basic technical skills needed for arts expression.” Children had multiple opportunities to use various media and tools.” They made large scale animal puppets/costumes (tigers, lions, gorillas, bears, and a giant cyclops by: sculpting clay molds; covering them with multiple layers of papier mache; painting the masks; and attaching them to a costume body. They made a 4’X6’ ‘clown car’ from cardboard and painted it. They built and decorated stage sets and backdrops. They developed performance routines with the animal costumes and also a ‘fire’ dance. They walked on stilts (many for the first time). Stilt walking is an annual activity that is integrated into all of our arts camps. It is almost beyond words to describe the joy and sense of accomplishment on the faces of each child as he/she masters this performance skill. Goal 3. “Our hope is that this exposure will spur children to want to have more involvement in the arts as they grow and open their thinking to the arts as a possible career path.” We likely won’t know much about individual outcomes for this goal for some time. However, we are working on transforming one of our out-of-school-time programs from one with a general academic enrichment model to have more of a focus on arts and humanities. We hope to provide even more regular exposure to the arts for children. The Arts Camp occurred on-site at and was designed to serve the affordable housing community of Liberty Plaza and the surrounding Summit-University neighborhood in which it is located. The Liberty Plaza Arts Camp served exactly the community and individual participants we intended it to serve- children in grades K-5 (and some older students who helped out) from low income families living in this community and neighborhood. All participants were from minority cultures that included Somali, Oromo, African American, and multi-racial families. The camp was free for all participants; the spaces we used were fully physically accessible. With many of the activities occurring outdoors in an area that is visible to much of the housing community, people were drawn out of their homes with curiosity about the activities occurring near their front doors. New participants joined the camp in this way and parents came out to observe and some to help. Every enrolled child, regardless of age, size, or ability mastered the skill of walking on stilts during the arts camp period. By observation every child who had never been on stilts was walking independently within four days. We achieved our target for average daily attendance for all enrollees at 75%. That is children attended 75% of all possible sessions they could have attended.