Do you ever wonder …
How do teaching artists help unlock creativity in young people?
What transformation does Arts Corps help make happen?
What happens behind the scenes?
Find out in Arts Corps new vlog series – Inside the Storage Studio.
Teaching Artist & Arts Corps Faculty Development Manager Eduardo Mendonça introduces the Storage Studio.
Eduardo talks about how he helps young people unlock their creativity.
Stay tuned for more inspirational stories, insights and vlogs!
Read MoreThis 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!
I 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”.
On June 7th, Arts Corps held the end-of-the year Teaching Artist Meeting.
Our veteran master teaching artist Vicky Edmonds took us on an astonishing journey to deeply reflect on what teaching means for us. Using her wizard technique of encouraging all of us to submerge into our soul to inundate our papers with words of hope and confidence on what we do. Thanks Vicky. Reader, please find below, some excerpts.”
“….teaching is like gardening sewing wildflowers, volunteers and heirlooms….” (Stephany Hazelrigg)
“ …. Is like the tide, sure as the pull of the moon….” (Elizabeth Whitford)
“….my students demand that I become my better self sooner than I had dreamed….” (Aaron Walker-Loud)
“….hidden light in the soul, getting out to the light of the sun….” (Tomas Oliva)
“…the process of creating is like a metamorphosis…finally emerging to spread its
wings and shine…” (Lana Sundberg)
“… you think nobody likes the meat. …when the class is over, everyone is hungry for more….” (Geoff Garza)
“…teaching is like eating a watermelon with a lot of seeds…” (Amber Flame)
“…teaching is like a nap in the spring… one finds renewal in both light and storm…” (Sean O’Neill)
“….teaching is like Che Guevara walking unarmed into the storm…” (Daniel Pak)
“….burns and breaths things and in to its smallest and most basic
elements of truth…” (Arturo Rodriguez)
“…my art is like …..erupting in red and purple, dark and yearning for light….” (Lara Davis)
“….celebration and love encouraged those children whose explored arts without fear the beauty (Eduardo Mendonça)
Read MoreIn case you missed all the fabulous stories at Low Income Housing’s, Meadowbrook View. You can read all my blogs on the Arts Corps website. This video is a continuation of my last post “And so, here we are“. Enjoy! It’s was a groovin’ time.
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