We catch up with Teaching Artist Lauren Atkinson who stopped by the Arts Corps office to show off some recent drawings by young artists in her “Exploration in Art” class. Stay tuned to meet the young artists working in her class!
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This story was written by Henry Luke, Arts Corps alumni and Youth Speaks Seattle coordinator. Youth Speaks Seattle became a program of Arts Corps in 2011. This article was originally published in Arts Corps’ latest magazine and annual report which can be found here.
In 2008, I walked into my first poetry slam. I had never been to any event featuring spoken word. When I heard the word poetry, I thought of dead white men like Shakespeare and Robert Frost. I never expected to enjoy poetry, let alone perform it.
When I arrived, people were laughing, dancing, and freestyling. I wanted to know them! Itwas an atmosphere of spontaneous energy and emotion that I had never experienced before. At the time, very little felt sacred in my life, but when the poets began performing I felt a kind of reverence for the power of their words. The audience clapped and snapped their fingers, gasped and shouted, even cried. I was moved by the power of a poem to pull me into a story, make me feel so many emotions in a few minutes. I had never seen anyone declare themselves like that, to get onstage with nothing but their story and say “This is who I am! This is what I believe in!” I saw nothing ironic or self-conscious in their celebration of life and love. Each word was a piece of their truth.
My introduction to Youth Speaks Seattle coincided with a massive change in my worldview: I realized I was a part of many massive and unjust systems that disconnect and silence people I know and love. At the same time, I came to see myself as a fragment of something even larger, an interconnected universe filled with meaning and mystery. Poetry became the piece that tied everything together: when writing, I never had to compartmentalize the personal and the political. Performance gave a sensation of release, speaking my stories into existence made them that much more real.
At Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam (the national Youth Speaks gathering), I met poets from Philadelphia, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York, and Guam. I sat twenty feet from Bobby Seale as he spoke about the founding of the Black Panthers and compared it to the work Youth Speaks does today. I have realized spoken word is not just an art form. It is a movement. There are young people across the world speaking their truth and creating spaces where that is safe to do. We are storytellers of our generation.
Today when I hear the word poetry, I think of my friends, I think of myself. And my journey continues in my new position at Arts Corps as the Youth Speaks Seattle Coordinator.
I am honored to hold space for other young people across Seattle to express themselves and step into their power, whatever form that takes.
Youth Speaks Seattle’s 2012 Slam Series Info:
Feb 10, 7pm @ Harambee: 316 South 3rd St, Renton
Mar 2, 7pm @ Theater Off Jackson: 409 7th Ave South, Seattle
Stay Tuned for Details on the Wild Card Slam and Grand Slam Finals here!
This story is from Arts Corps’ new magazine and annual report. Read all the articles here.
The youth at Spruce Street Secure Crisis Residential Center all have one thing in common – they are in crisis. Youth are brought to the center by police when they are found as a runaway or are in dangerous circumstances. Some are fleeing a home of domestic violence. Some are in gangs. Some are bouncing around the foster care system. Some are battling mental illness.
They are all in crisis.
Their stay at Spruce Street ranges from 1-2 weeks. To keep everyone safe, the youth – ages 12-17 – are given facility clothing upon arrival and are required to hand over all of their belongings. Aside from special trips, they are kept in a sort of lock down. Except instead of locks on the outside of their bedroom doors to keep them in, they have locks on the inside to keep people out and keep themselves safe (staff all have keys).
Services are intensive – counseling, behavior modification, coping skills, self-awareness, group therapy, substance abuse screening. The hope is that once they return to the outside world, they are better equipped to begin creating their own stability and imagine different possibilities.Arts Corps has been a part of Spruce Street’s program since 2006. It’s unlike any of our other sites. Instead of building relationships with students over a 16-week quarter, teaching artists at Spruce Street see each youth once or twice at the most. During that short and intensive time, they have to act fast, read the youth and determine how to help them reach into themselves and express something meaningful. Often they are confronted with hostility, indifference or verbal attacks. But the teaching artists we send in are compassionate and highly skilled in creating safe spaces for youth in crisis to learn a different way, even if just for one moment. Sometimes that moment carries with them.
Spruce Street Youth Supervisor Jim Marsh tells a story about one young man who came through the facility. “He was hostile, very angry at his family. Vicky [Edmonds, Arts Corps teaching artist] came in and we did poetry and he wrote a poem about his family. It wasn’t the nicest poem but it was real. Later, we were sitting at a family meeting and all these adults were talking at him and about him. He referenced that poem to express how angry he was. Before, his anger was expressed with foul language and behavioral issues. He said writing that poem helped him get to how angry he really was. That was so powerful; he was finally able to articulate something that had been plaguing him for a long time.”
“I think about this a lot – this is a place where people go in crisis. How can art address that? We can explore the commonality of crisis. In that hour [of art] is a whole new world they become part of. They see other opportunities for their lives,” says Jim.
Arts Corps Teaching Artist Geoffrey Garza teaches visual art at Spruce Street. He is adept at reading the emotional vibe of the students, and Jim says Geoffrey has taught youth and staff alike that there are no mistakes. It’s all learning.
In a blog, Geoffrey tells the story about a particularly oppositional student at Spruce Street. He antagonized Geoffrey, threateningly circling around the art table. Geoffrey set out a piece of paper and the youth stood over it. “I want to throw paint on it,” he said. Geoffrey found tubes of paint and told him to go for it. For 45 intense minutes, the youth intensely sprayed, smeared and splattered paint across the paper, hands and body covered in paint, guttural noises accompanying every move. Geoffrey then showed him pictures of Dale Chilhuly using a broom to push color around, his feet covered in paint splatters. The youth studied it, said, “cool” and asked for another piece of paper.
A life-changing moment? We can never really know. But in that moment, that youth saw a totally different possibility. And he made it happen himself.
This year, Arts Corps will be taking the partnership with Spruce Street one step further, helping develop a framework to evaluate and measure the success of their programs. This work is part of Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections program, of which Arts Corps is a national network member. It was the strength of Arts Corps’ programming in high-need community settings like Spruce Street that drew the attention of Carnegie Hall for this program.
With this national resource, Arts Corps’ goal and hope is to provide the Spruce Street staff with an assessment tool to measure the impact of arts programs in their facility.
Lana Crawford, executive director of Spruce Street, says she knows there is an impact, but it’s often hard to know how much. “We can’t put the whole fire out, but we can start,” says Lana. “Art is key. Art is huge in helping them express themselves.”
An assessment tool will help them – and Arts Corps – understand what they intuitively already know: somehow, in some way, they are making an impact.
“We’re trying to create a safe space for these kids. A space where no one is hurting them, no one is threatening them, no one is putting them down. A lot of them have never had that. That’s a big deal. It’s to get them stabilized and thinking about what’s going on in their life and what they are going to do,” says Jim.
Jim says watching Arts Corps teaching artists at Spruce Street has taught him about how to connect to the youth and help them see their own strengths and talents.
“I love it when the kids find their voices. Some days I tell the kids, ‘Anything you want to say to me, you have to do in a poem.’ And then they find their creative spirit.”
Read MoreI am about to begin my 12th year of teaching “creative practice” with Arts Corps. When beginning a new year, I enter a period of reflection that begins with looking back on my journey as a student, revisiting the importance of teaching and the relationship that teachers delicately hold with their students, and the significant role of the artist in the educational system. I was child of a military family, sometimes attending three different schools in one year. I discovered from my nomadic education the necessity and crucial role of creative learning led by ‘creative’s.’ I remember learning the most under their tutelage. They kept me engaged and curious about education and this had a powerful affect on my life’s choices and current path. I remember the teachers who inspired curiosity, who questioned the norm and encouraged me to do the same. They pushed me out of my comfort zones to see and to seek a better understanding of what life holds from many perspectives and encouraged me to discover solutions that would benefit the whole.
My work with Arts Corps as a teaching artist and former faculty development manager has pushed me in the same way. Being involved in the development and implementation of the Creative Habits of Mind framework—Imagining Possibilities, Courage and Risk taking, Critical Thinking, Persistence and Discipline, Reflection—I have come to understand on a deep level how the habits have impacted the way I teach and how I live my life. I have learned that creativity is best supported through practice and the habits that are formed through this practice. During the tenure of Arts Corps founder Lisa Fitzhugh, and through the diligent work with the Arts Corps’ team, I developed both an intellectual and an experiential understanding of why these habits are necessary for all of us. These habits are not just for students learning about art or for arts organizations developing effective assessment and evaluation strategies to prove their reason for being. These creative habits are necessary for everyone. With daily practice these habits become tools for living a meaningful life and a practice that supports authentic being!
Since moving on from my position as faculty development manager at Arts Corps, I have continued on with this work, exploring the meaning and application of creative practice with Creative Ground, a new partnership formed with Lisa Fitzhugh and Sarah Bicknell. Creative Ground works with individuals and organizations, using creative practice as a tool to for change and transformation to support collaboration through authentic leadership. Creative Ground has added three more habits to Arts Corps’ five, which include, Present moment awareness, Observation of the Natural World/ Technology Hiatus and Tolerance for ambiguity/Trust. We have found when an individual intentionally integrates creative practice into their daily lives, they are better equipped to effectively address the accelerated pace of change and chaos we are experiencing in the world.
If you are interested in finding out more about creative practice, I invite you to come attend Creative Ground’s, Creative Practice for Renewal and Authentic Leadership for Non-Profit Organizations, happening on October 21st and 22nd at the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island. You will come away revitalized, renewed and fortified with creative tools that you can implement on your return.
For more information you can contact me at lauren@creativegroundhq.com or go to https://www.creativegroundhq.com/offerings/team-renewal/
peace,
Lauren Atkinson
Teaching Artist
It was June 2011, and the spring was still offering some raindrops as apparent resistance to the sun who timidly appeared to announce the proximity of the summer. The undefined weather resembled my last day at Kimball Elementary School reflecting on a mixed feeling around my heart. Happiness for moving to a different direction with Arts Corps after accepting my new role as Faculty Development Manager, blended with the sadness of knowing that I made a decision to stop teaching my afterschool class.
I didn’t intend to overload myself with too many different activities, so I could embrace my new responsibilities and ongoing activities with more efficiency. Although, not ready to cease my academic activities, I will still be teaching music once a week at a non-profit music school in the Eastside. I felt that I was ready to join the Arts Corps staff and become a new component of an impressive team that bravely fights to provide quality Arts Education to King County.
On my way to the gymnasium where my class was held, I performed the same ritual: stop first in the lunch room, say “Hi” to Mary, and pickup the basket full of snacks to distribute to my students after our usual check in. I was almost entering my teaching space, when a student intercepted me, and with a beautiful smile on his face and a vivid voice said “I know you… you are the drumming teacher, and I can’t wait to join your class next quarter”.
Without waiting for my response, the boy disappeared into the long corridor among other students, parents and teachers who moved rapidly in different directions to who knows where. What I know is that his statement made me ponder how that child’s reaction would be when he finds out that the class he wanted was no longer available. I had to “put myself back together” and be prepared to bring a positive presence to my students who were about to arrive.
After my class, before I turned my car on, I spent a few minutes reflecting about the weather and myself. Why the image of the child walking away after his solid announcement was affecting me so hard and why I was thinking about the rain and the sunlight. Those assorted conditions some how made me understand even better, that Teaching Artists are making a difference.
It was clear that that child wanted to stay afterschool because my drumming class did exercise a positive response while making the school still a safe environment even after-hours. I should not procrastinate on giving a bigger step to help Arts Corps to imagining possibilities by looking at ways to expand the action of Teaching Artists who for sure will hear some other boy or girl saying: “…I can’t wait to join your class next quarter”.
My 7-year-old daughter Clara has never been in an Arts Corps class, but she’s been impacted by Arts Corps in more ways that she knows. Last year out of the blue, while I was at Festa – our biggest fundraiser of the year – she declared that she “prays to Arts Corps and Buddha.” There are many unexpected aspects of that statement but it always makes me smile.
The public school we chose for her – our decision and criteria totally influenced by Arts Corps – is an alternative one with full time visual arts and music teachers, dance residencies, yoga and more. At the tour, the principle wove poetry into his talk about the school. Test scores were never mentioned. Individualized learning and art and organic gardens and community were. I wanted to go back to kindergarten.
Last year in first grade, Clara became friends with a tiny little spitfire of a girl named Kate. Kate is delightfully spirited (at least to me; I’m not her mother), creative and full of life. On the drive home from school, I would sometimes be lucky enough to catch tiny glimpses into Clara’s day. Special guest from the Seattle Public Library. Caterpillar at show and tell. What Kate packed in her own lunch. That’s right – 6-year-old Kate apparently packed her own lunch.
Sometimes it was cereal. Sometimes it was an English muffin and 6 snack boxes of raisins. Without hesitation, she’d solicit better looking food from her friends. I always questioned to myself how much of this was true. The one time I questioned it out loud, the response was an exasperated eye roll and sigh from my 1st grade tween: “It’s true mom. She told me so.” Adults are so dumb.
Until one day when Clara said all Kate had was leftover spaghetti in her lunchbox. And Kate doesn’t even like spaghetti. Clara was silent for a while and I could see in the rear view mirror that her eyes were focused and partially closed – her “thinking” look.
Very thoughtfully she said, “I don’t think Kate packs her own lunch.” I daringly ask “why” hoping not to awaken the inner tween and shut her down. “Because if she DID pack her own lunch, she wouldn’t pack something she didn’t like.”
I had to pull over because I was whooping so vigorously. “Do you know what you just did? That was CRITICAL THINKING!! YEAH!” An excited explanation about critical thinking ensued, along with me spilling over with pride and probably tearing up a little. Clara looked pleased with herself. I said a silent prayer myself to art making and the wonderful things it brings out in us all.
Next up – getting my awesomely adventurous 4-year-old son Michael to grasp on to the creative habit “persistence and discipline.” Here’s hoping.
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