second teen meeting a success

We took our teen meeting yesterday out into the lot next to our building that Jessie spends much of her efforts on. Baltimore is full of empty lots where houses or buildings used to be but were torn down. If you see one and the grass in it is mowed, that means there's a neighbor there who cares enough about the space to maintain it. We've filled ours with sculpture and now Jessie is coordinating the installation of benches and a stone path. There are some mosaic animals that she built and kids mosaic'ed which are mostly finished. There are also a row of birdhouses that kids painted which you might be able to see in the background of the photo. The animals don't have names and they are pretty ambiguous as to what they are but I think Moe is a good name for this one.

Then we talked about planning an event for November. We decided to have a fashion competition where we had a bunch of fabric and cardboard recycled materials, and people have to make an outfit out of it, and then everybody votes on the best outfit. They decided to call it Funny Swag Night. Apparently one of the kids who came to yesterday's meeting produces videos starring his friends, like comedy videos, so we decided that after the competition we could have a video showcase of his and anybody else's videos. They brainstormed all the things we need to do for the event: promotion, music, food, equipment, etc.

The meeting went super well and was way more fun than the previous one. Still need to bring in some kids from other schools.

teen outreach

I have been too busy with programming and outreach to even write in here, but I had a promising meeting yesterday with a guidance counselor at one of the high schools I've been visiting. The school is a vocational/technical school so they have no arts program. Students pick a trade to concentrate in, like carpentry, computers, business, child care, cosmetology, and others. Students roam the hallways carrying creepy mannequin heads sporting crazy haircuts, much like the kind my friend Tory used to have around her house when she was in cosmetology school.

I visited to drop off some flyers for our second teen advisory group meeting, which is tomorrow. I haven't even had time to write on here about how the first one went. Jessie thought that it went really well, but I wasn't sure. That's probably because I organized most of it and had a specific vision for it, a vision which I knew our first meeting would probably fall short of, but I was still hoping for something awesome. The students who came were mostly from one school, the smaller academy I visited where I met the very enthusiastic AP art teacher, who also attended. It is great to see an art teacher who is that close with her students and that passionate about their art education—when only a couple of them showed up, she was calling them on their cells, telling them to get over there. Apparently she has been hyping tomorrow's meeting, too.

There were four students there in total, two from the academy, one from a larger high school nearby, and one from a middle school nearby. Two of them were really late, they basically got there half way through. I served snacks and sodas and had everybody sign in so we can keep in touch with them (read: hound them).

My agenda was incredibly long, but I wrote it to cover topics of conversation for the next few meetings. I wanted to be able to pick ones that seem to work with the flow of the conversation. Some of my favorite topics on the agenda for the meetings, a few of which were covered in the last meeting, are:

• What are some memorable art projects that you've done in school before? What did you like/dislike about them?
• Do you think graffiti is art? Why or why not?
• What is an example of a type of dance you saw recently that you'd like to learn? Or a music video you saw that had impressive dancing in it?
• Is freestyle type of dancing something you'd like to learn from a teacher, or something you feel doesn't need to be taught?
• Do you like art classes where you make things that are functional (like making bowls and plates in ceramics) or do you like art that's more for fun and decoration, like a painting to hang on a wall?
• If you don't enjoy art now, is it something you used to enjoy when you were a kid? If so, when did you stop making art? Why do you think that happened?

We got some insightful answers. A couple of people said that their favorite projects were ones that involved a long process with many steps to it, that ended in a detailed final product. People also said that projects that had ended in some kind of gallery show or ceremony were their favorite. One kid said his least favorite art activity is anything involving charcoal, which I had to agree with. Everyone agreed that graffiti is art. One kid said that certain types of modern dance can be taught in a classroom, but having the right teacher is important. The only dance classes we've ever offered targeting youth were definitely taught by the Wrong Teacher, so hopefully hearing this from students will impact our teacher hiring process in the future.

I also asked some logistical questions about what students' after-school time looks like right now: what they do, how they get around, what time of day would work best for them in terms of classes. I also asked what the best way is to promote our events among their friends (Facebook). I think “flow” was what was lacking in the meeting, mostly because of the small number of people. It ended up being more of a question-and-answer session than a discussion group with people discussing each others' ideas. I'm hoping that with more people, and if groups of friends come, discussion will be livelier and will arise more organically.

Once the group picks up some momentum, I really want to ask the question about why we lose art as we go from childhood to adolescence. It happens to so many kids and it's part of the reason why our teen enrollment is so low. My perspective on why it happens is that art is seen as a “soft” thing and kids don't want to be “soft” (and often can't be). The fact that both of our art instructors are women who did not grow up anywhere near the center does not help. We're trying to see if two specific male artists from West Baltimore whose public artwork we admire might be able to teach a class next term in order to remedy this situation.

Back to the point of this entry, which is about the meeting I had at the vocational-technical high school. I went to drop of flyers but ended up staying for close to an hour talking with a guidance counselor about possible ways to partner with the school. Because the school is several blocks from us, and kids come there from all over the city, I wrote a proposal for a school-specific version of our teen group that could take place at the school, either after-school or during last period. This is part of my outreach agenda at the moment: to bring our programs to people, and then slowly draw them over to where we are. The guidance counselor I spoke with was incredibly receptive to our ideas and very action-oriented. She asked me to put something in writing for her and said, “When can you have it to me? Tomorrow morning?” I had it to her this afternoon and hopefully I'll be meeting with the principal next week.

My proposal makes several suggestions for ways our community center can serve students at this school. One is through the school-specific teen group, which would perhaps be the best way to form relationships with students and faculty and get our foot in the door there. The second would be to do a schoolwide mural, mosaic or sculpture, which could work with the themes and values of the school, or match a topic that students are studying in a class. My idea was for students in the carpentry, masonry, and electrical wiring trades to lead and design some kind of outdoor sculpture project, to show off their skills and gain experience and confidence leading a project and directing others. The third outreach tactic I proposed would be for us to do workshops during the schoolday on a certain art technique, like monoprinting or photo image transfers (if I could get my hands on 15 old polaroid cameras and some electric skillets, I would love love love to do an image transfer workshop). The fourth potential partnership that I thought of would be for students concentrating in Child Care, one of the vocational tracts offered at the school, to assistant teach in the classes at our center. Baltimore City students are required to complete 75 hours of service learning prior to graduating, and students would earn credit hours from their work with us.

After tomorrow's meeting, and after I've finished all the documenting of it that I need to do for administrative purposes, I will write something about it on here. And I'll try to illustrate with a photo or two.

Still to come: musings about snacks, last-minute caterpillar-making, and the birth of a sandwich board.

week two down

We've finished our second week of classes at the arts center this week and I finally have some time to sit down and reflect about the past couple of weeks. Our first week of programming introduced me to some of the challenges facing the center, the biggest being the poor enrollment in our visual arts classes. After pouring over books in the MICA library to find some great artists' work to introduce the activity for my first Wednesday night drawing class, I sat alone in the studio for an hour and a half before it became clear that the one student who had registered wasn't coming. It's a much different situation than what I was naively imagining when I wrote many of my lesson plans for this term. My art lessons, especially for teen and adult classes, rely heavily on discussion about our experiences and ideas, which just doesn't work when you have one student. The other visual arts teacher at the center, Jessie, feels the same way about the lessons she's planned. Sitting in the studio alone last Wednesday made me determined to figure out the best way to recruit more students to my classes, and to figure out what type of art class people will actually be interested in taking.

Our poor enrollment in youth classes has to do in part with the gap that exists between schools and the organizations providing after-school programming. It's a problem I became familiar with working in an after-school program at an elementary school in DC, where I heard students talk about their teachers every day, but had little opportunity to interact with them or to connect my activities with what the kids were learning in school. Here at the arts center in Baltimore, the challenges go a little further. We try to serve the West Baltimore neighborhoods directly surrounding the center, but a lot of our students come from other parts of the city or suburbs. It takes a particularly interested parent, with enough time and energy to sign their child up and bring them here, to get kids into our classes.

Jessie and I brainstormed some strategies for outreach. We're setting up a multigenerational advisory group for people in the neighborhood, which will be a discussion group where people can give their input on our classes and events and make suggestions. We're also setting up a separate teen advisory group for teens interested in art, to hear their ideas for classes and workshops. We hope that if they design the classes, they'll be proud of them and invested in them, and will be more likely to sign up for them and tell their friends about them.

I made a flyer for the advisory group, which at no point mentioned the words “advisory group” but explained that we want teens' input on our class planning for next year, to figure out what kind of art and dance they'd like to learn. The big draw will probably be the fact that high school seniors can get service learning credit hours for coming, and there will be snacks. I visited five West Baltimore high schools in the neighborhoods closest to our center this week advocating for the teen advisory group with guidance counselors and art teachers, and have been following up with them via phone and e-mail. Three of the schools I visited were smaller academies, most located in some part of a larger school, and all seemed like positive environments; in one, teachers and students were sitting in a lounge chatting and laughing, and joking in the hallways. The larger high schools I've visited were pretty standard Baltimore City public high schools, probably some of the worst school environments in the country. But at every school so far, all the teachers and staff I've encountered were very receptive to our mission and have said they'll help me get more kids into our classes. It's been a very positive experience so far and I feel confident that I'll be able to increase our enrollment by the end of this term or for our winter workshops.

I'm also doing a demo on papermaking in the fourth grade art class at the elementary school nearest to us this Tuesday. We'll be doing the same activity in my pre-school recycled art class on Monday, so hopefully I'll have all the kinks worked out before doing the activity in a new environment with about five times as many kids. The pre-schoolers have been working diligently on their books the past two weeks. I'll have photos of actual art on here soon.