Arts + Youth Development: Essential Experiences and Investing in the Arts in Akron

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

— Thomas Merton

Photo Credit: GAR Foundation (Anthony Boarman)

When I was a little (often what I call kiddos), art gave me the tools to express myself when I felt no one understood me. I was an awkward, lonely kid who often felt disconnected from my family and peers. But, I was lucky. I had parents who noticed my affinity for the arts and nurtured that love of creating and storytelling. My dad took me to art museums, movies, bookstores, and kept me in an array of art supplies. My mom, for all of her flaws, shared her love of reading with me and I spent many of my days nestled into the corners of my local library gobbling up anything I could find. Art teachers throughout my years leaned in and gave me space to experiment. Because of them, I find myself still creating, using an eclectic mix of visual and the written word to express myself and explore the world. Because of all of them, I now work to make sure other young people have those same opportunities.

There’s been enough evidence out there that shows how important the arts are to youth development. Americans for the Arts produced a short factsheet highlighting the importance of arts and youth education. I won’t belabor the point and have linked it if you’d like to review, but some of the key findings include, four out of five young people who engaged in the arts are more likely to be civically engaged, they’re two times more likely to graduate college, and we see a 5% drop in neighborhood crime. There are a number of other studies that show how engagement in the arts improves self-esteem, confidence, and sense of belonging. It is any wonder that with all of this information we still find schools cutting arts education and the broader society not valuing the arts as vital to the vibrancy, engagement, and forward vision of our cities.

When I was a program officer at GAR Foundation, I worked to co-develop a program called Essential Experiences that provided co-curricular arts and cultural experiences to every single Akron Public Schools’ elementary school student each year. Over six years, the Foundation invested $3.2 million to provide support to seven arts and culture partners to make this program run. But what does that really look like in practice? Annually, upwards of 10,000 littles, from pre-k through fifth grade, have the opportunity to leave their school buildings and go out to experience the arts in an engaging, interactive way. They got to visit sites that they may never have due to financial barriers, transportation, etc.

From 2018 to 2024, I had the honor of working alongside APS partners and seven arts and cultural partners to build out the program. In the beginning, I combed through curriculum with partners to make sure that it was appropriate, engaging, and in alignment with our goals. We pushed partners to think differently about how they staffed the program. We know how arts and culture organizations often lack the diversity of the school district and so we helped them think differently about how the littles can see themselves and gave them the resources to do so. Some partners even hired APS high schoolers to help them lead the work, so we were impacting young people at the elementary and high school levels.

But I also wanted this to be a living, breathing program. We built out a survey tool to give realtime feedback on the program from teachers and we addressed challenges at they arose. It evolved over time as we faced new challenges (like covid) or unique opportunities. But we didn’t stop there because I wanted to make sure that each of the partners involved had the opportunity to learn from each other. I developed a professional development series for the partners called Essential Exchange. This workshop series gave each of the partners the opportunity to show off their experience and work through sticky problems together. And because I’m me, I like to infuse play into my work and so we would often find ourselves digging in the dirt, dancing around, or co-building art from artists’ prompts.

In my eight years at GAR, this was one of the programs that I was most proud to lead. It was not easy and I had to have difficult conversations when there were challenges. But, because of this investment, the program has impacted thousands of little ones and people see the value! It has won the 2023 Silver Magna Award for the school district from the National School Board Association, the Akron Art Museum won 2023 Best Education and Outreach from the Ohio Museums Association, and the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center also won best regional education program from the National Park Service. I’ve had the opportunity to speak at the national and local level about this work and how the foundation showed up in a new way to be true partners.

Although I have moved on to another Northeast Ohio foundation, I get to carry my work within the arts and culture sector forward. It will look different, but I’m still excited to find ways to continue to do the meaningful work that transforms people’s, especially young people’s, lives.

I had the benefit of having people continue to pour into me year after year, and I just hope that I’m able to do the same for others. That is what drives me. That’s what makes me tick. That’s what makes my heart sing even when it feels like everything is crumbling around me.