Disruption and Invention: With, Not For, Young Artists

By: Dennie Palmer Wolf* and Jeff M. Poulin

This blog is published as part of the #KeepMakingArt campaign. The curated series features voices in the arts/culture, education, and social change sectors to capture the deep thinking and innovation occurring as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Right this minute there are roughly 42 million adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 in the United States, all making daily choices about who they want to be: choosing elective courses, deciding what to do between 3pm and sleep, riding or walking to destinations they chose, earning and spending money. Some of them are the future of creative work: people who are thinking about being artists, performers, musicians, and writers.

Chances are the current pandemic has them considering whether a creative life is possible – feasible, affordable, open to someone like themselves – at the very moment when that world began cancelling, shuttering, and laying off the teaching artists who was the first person to say to them “Yes, absolutely, poetry (or choreography or set design) could be yours.” 

Their creative lives – and ours – hang by a thread. So, as governments, foundations, and donors work to save arts and cultural organizations from collapse, we cannot afford to balance the books, hold on to staff, get the doors open, and only then, turn to the question of whether and how we will support young people. We must make deliberate youth-centered choices right this minute. Young people are not an afterthought, they are all the future that the arts and culture have.

This blog is both a stake in the ground and an invitation. It stakes out the kinds of serious actions we have to take now. And it invites you, as readers to join in. Over the ensuing weeks, we will write weekly about the concrete ways in which young artists and their advocates are acting to invent their futures. 

To open the bidding, here is the fundamental goal we all have to commit to tackling:

Disrupting Inequity

In every sector of our lives COVID-19 has x-rayed and magnified the inequalities that pervade our “land of opportunity.” There is no sheltering in place if you are homeless; there is no healthy eating if your family is eating off the shelves of Dollar General; there is no on-line learning if you are 18, without a computer, and unable to pay your phone’s data charges.

Becoming an artist has never been easy in the United States. Public education, on which many families depend for opportunities, typically offers young people music or visual art lessons only once weekly. Throughout the country, poor students and students of color have fewer, shorter, and more interrupted opportunities to learn in the arts. As former education secretary, Arne Duncan pointed out, these grave inequities are a ‘civil rights issue’ baked into the daily schedules of public schools.

Moreover, in the last generation, arts activities have increasingly become pay–to-play opportunities, carrying tuition, materials and travel fees that limit who joins. (Earlier this winter, I saw a spring catalogue from a public elementary school in a gentrifying neighborhood that offered fabulous arts opportunities: at close to $500 for 16 sessions.) Not surprisingly, young artists and performers emerge from this system unevenly prepared.  At CVS one night last winter, I stood behind a young woman Xerox-ing her drawings to apply to her city’s high school of the arts, with the machine turning her stunning portraits of wild birds to smudged, gray phantoms at a quarter per page. Even if she was admitted and went on to art school, the data from national studies like SNAAP tells us that like many young women and people of color, she will struggle to belong, to network, find internships or paid work to finance her student debt. 

Our system rations imagination according social class and zip code. We need fundamental disruptions to this system.

 Put plainly, the path to participation in arts and culture has always been steep, but increasingly, it has become a narrow, exclusive toll road. Our system rations imagination according social class and zip code. In response, we need fundamental disruptions as pointed out in Creative Generation’s Campaign 2020: Arts and Cultural Education is a Fundamental, Civil, and Human Right. But what does it look like, on the ground, in this moment, to act on that call? What if every sector put its shoulder to the wheel? What are immediate imperatives?

 

Explicit Funding for Youth

Many emergency funding plans are silent on the topic young people. But what if they took an explicit and proactive stance and earmarked a portion of dollars to focus on organizations that actively serve young artists and creatives (both those in school and recently graduated)? Moreover, imagine if that earmark went to programs that center young people and allow them to lead programs, initiatives, and community responses?

Imagine a world where applying organizations got extra points (or added dollars) if they could demonstrate that they are sustaining their most substantial, high-quality program serving youth and young adults? What if the application process required public access to program designs and the creation of an open-source directory of applicants to promote stronger and more innovative practices? 

And, finally, what if the accountability for receiving a grant wasn’t the standard-issue final report, or glossy video, but an obligation to share what your organization learned with at least two other youth-serving arts organizations? 

 

Re-inventing On-line Learning

For years, the arts have fought off on-line teaching and learning, arguing it was a poor substitute for the real thing: actually dancing, doing scene work, or sketching outdoors. But just because on-line is virtual, doesn’t mean it can’t be done well, even imaginatively. 

There is a black hole [of opportunity] for middle and high school students capable of taking on long-term projects and working in digital teams.

The current rush to on-line learning has returned us to full-frontal chalk ‘n talk. The majority of what I have seen features definitions, templates, and dead-ahead camera work reminiscent of the earliest, stiffest, and dreariest days of educational television.  On the surface, there might be what appears as blanket access to online arts learning opportunities for school-aged youth, but there is a black hole for middle and high school students capable of taking on long-term projects and working in digital teams. 

Who will step forward to be the Sesame Street for this setting, creating vivid content, taught in more adventurous ways, connecting out to the many public archives coming on line, led and inspired by living, breathing, compelling artists who can speak to the joys and terrors of making original work? 

Most importantly, who will do this work in partnership with young people, not just in consumer focus groups, but also in the roles of designer, technicians, and audiences?

Re-thinking Employment 

In the wake of COVID-19, thousands of arts organizations are struggling as employers. Take, for example, the State of California, where legislation has changed the rights of hourly workers to minimum wage and benefits. If arts organizations take on, rather than dodge, this legislation, they could become better employers, re-thinking how they compensate – and nurture – staff. It could become a moment to expect, and compensate deeper practice in education, youth development, and the arts. 

Imagine if arts and cultural organizations sought and sustained teaching artists as part-time employees (not gig workers) who brought their artistry and any of the multitude of competencies in which they excel: trauma-informed practice, the skills of working with students on the Autism spectrum, speaking multiple languages, etc. With those kinds of skills, how many more young people might be recognized as “gifted”? The convergence of these competencies, through long-term investment, financial cultivation, and supports could deepen arts education practice and slow the destructive churn within organizations. (Yesterday, while scanning on-line arts offerings, I saw the name of a long-time, accomplished teaching artist pop up in a chat box. Immediately, I thought, “What could be accomplished if, as a field, we could sustain that kind of “village elder?”) 

Arts organizations are uniquely well positioned to provide internships and hands-on, minds-on career training. This is the moment to build, not to trim, those programs.

As organizations re-think their human resources, they cannot forget young people. In the last decade, creative youth development organizations have breathed life into a “cascade model” where one-time students, graduate to studio mentors, and then employees, increasing numbers of whom become program managers or executive directors. Similarly, arts organizations are uniquely well positioned to provide internships and hands-on, minds-on career training. This is the moment to build, not to trim, those programs. What could these cascade and apprenticeship models teach organizations about investing in human development?

Deepening Arts Integration

Typically, arts integration uses the materials and the methods of art forms to enhance the learning of academic content. Thus, theater brings the rivalries of the Civil War to life; dancing models the position and the movement of the planets.  A major goal has been to demonstrate that rigorous arts subject matter is fully equal to that of other academic subjects. But I have begun to wonder about this one-to-one matching, where the arts “prove” they can serve history, science, or geometry. Does this arrangement agree, from the start, to a kind of handmaiden role?

Particularly in this tumultuous time, what if we harnessed the power of the arts to developing these kinds of broad human capacities like listening or empathy?

In this period of re-thinking, do we have a rare opportunity to re-make arts integration in a more powerful way?  For example, I have been struck by research in medical fields showing how the arts (reading literature or looking at visual art) can deepen fundamental capacities like active listening and close observation. Particularly in this tumultuous time, what if we harnessed the power of the arts to developing these kinds of broad human capacities like listening or empathy? What a contribution to schools struggling to teach social-emotional skills in a meaningful way. And what a reservoir of insight for young artists and performers.

An Example in Practical Application

I want to come back to the issue of equity and the possibility that we could make a dent. Here’s what I am thinking: 

Research on young musicians tells us that the most powerful accelerating factor is having good private lessons, early and over time. What if in this on-line moment, a consortium of funders, together with tech innovators, developed a free platform with high audio quality and little delay?  What if they put out an all-points-bulletin to talented musicians for their time (contributed or modestly paid) to give master classes followed by micro-lessons to small groups of young musicians who could apply and enroll on-line? What if those musicians modeled the many kinds of know-how that comprise their musicianship. Yes, instrumental expertise, but also curiosity about the music of other traditions and cultures; close listening; ethical decisions (how do you borrow or build on without stealing someone else’s music?).  

What if we watched that experiment: Do accomplished musicians step forward? Do young musicians attend and persist? Does their sense of belonging in the musical world change? Do they go on to audition, play in new ensembles, or enter competitions? Do they, in turn, contribute their time? Do they take their music outside the concert hall?

Finally, what if we used that data to build a case for other such innovations designed to level the playing field, making data a partner in the drive for equitable opportunities?

Inventing a Different Future, Together

What if we, together with young people, acted now, iterated quickly, made big, important mistakes and got on with better work? What if we used this moment to get to a more equitable system? Pie in the sky?  Maybe not.

In the last few years, the Creative Youth Development movement pushed our field to think across traditional and time-hardened barriers to recognize the needs of young people in science, design, and the arts. That work is a stepping-stone to what’s proposed here: that we invent a new future with, not for, young people.

Every week, we will profile a person, a team, or an organization that is inventing that future.

If you are a candidate, or if you know one, let us know.  We want to learn more.

This piece is written in the first person. But it draws on ideas, practices, and questions from many people and organizations working in the field. Later, more detailed, blogs will offer opportunities to acknowledge those specific contributions.

By Dennie Palmer Wolf, with Jeff M. Poulin

*Dennie Palmer Wolf

Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf, Principal Researcher at WolfBrown, is one of the leading arts education researchers and evaluators in the United States. She holds a doctorate from Harvard where she served as a researcher at Project Zero for more than a decade and then headed Harvard PACE, an initiative linking schools and external partners in new approaches to assessing student learning.  She led studies on the early development of artistic and symbolic capacities and later focused on design, implementation, and evaluation strategies that help cultural organizations and communities examine and improve how people gain access to learning, culture, and creativity both in and outside of formal institutions. Nationally, Wolf has helped a number of city-wide and regional consortia build coordinated systems that support critical and creative learning for young people in and out of school time, in cities as varied as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Portland, OR. Based on this work, Wolf conducted a strategic review of all aspects of arts education for the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a three-term appointee to the National Assessment Governing Board, the federal agency that measures student learning nationally. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, the Buck, Arnold, Carnegie, Mellon, Spencer, and William Penn foundations, and has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and books.