Third Space: Youth, Arts and Community Development

A Landmark Year: Introduction    Jumping In With Courage: An Interview with Ken Krafchek (Part 1)    Learning to Translate Art into the Language of Community by Christy Zuccarini (Part 2)    Art Work, Social Work: An Interview with Kara McDonagh (Part 3)    Grassroots Arts Education on the Cutting Edge: An Interview with Sonia BasSheva Mañjon (Part 4)    The Athena Project: Refining the Practice of Mentorship in Community Art by Minette Lee Mangahas (Part 5)    Valuing Public Scholarship: An Interview with Doug Blandy (Part 6)    Third Space: Youth, Arts and Community Development by Lori Hager (Part 7)

Part 7 of "A Landmark Year: Community Arts and U.S. Higher Education 2006," a CANuniversity series of timely articles, interviews, photographs and syllabi from the field. This essay is excerpted from a paper presented on April 27, 2006, at the University of Oregon Faculty Lecture Series by Lori Hager, assistant professor of arts and administration in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, University of Oregon, where she is deeply involved in all the community-arts programs. Her paper addresses, among other things, the remarkable new opportunities in the "Third Space" for teacher training for artists. Hager calls this her manifesto.

Today I am going to talk about my primary research focus in community youth arts, about the context out of which my interest and experience arose, and implications for the higher education – my manifesto, in other words. I’ll cover a little of my professional background, my research and how this drives me forward in my vision for working with higher education in this field.

When I was 13 years old and started to get into trouble because I had a lot of creative energy that needed an outlet, my mother gave me the choice of continuing my ballet classes or taking drama, and since I had offended my largely conservative ballet classmates by wearing a George McGovern for President button, I thought it wise to change directions. I grew up in Atlanta, in the midst of integration. I went to a public performing-arts high school that participated in bussing, so we had students from all socio-economic levels and classes, from the governor’s kids to kids from the projects. So, I started taking drama classes at the Academy Theatre in Atlanta, Ga. This was a professional regional theater with a resident company, a full mainstage season, a professional children’s theater, a theatre academy and an artists-in-school program. …

I took the bus everyday after school to the theater. It had its home in a wonderful old church with a sprawl of building behind it, which included a hidden garden in the midst of trees and flowers, shop spaces and the building that housed classrooms and the black-box theater. So, I went to the theater every day after school and worked in the administrative offices in exchange for taking classes. I answered phones, scrubbed toilets, hung lobby exhibits, helped in the subscription office and academy – whatever needed doing I did. I participated in an adolescent theater troupe, and we created plays around the experience of being teenagers, which we toured to adolescent-care facilities. As I got older I began to teach and to act professionally, and then gradually I began to focus on administration.

But what was critical in this experience is that I became part of the extended family of the resident theater company, I was mentored by adults I hugely admired, I participated in learning a professional skill that was fun and meant something. The theater was very much rooted in its community, committed to doing work that addressed issues involving the community, working with communities through the artist-in-schools program, and teaching this form of play creation that addressed social experience.

So, this idea of social responsibility through the arts has shaped everything that I have done since. I have my Ph.D. in Theater with an emphasis in theater for youth (TFY) from Arizona State University. TFY covers youth theater, professional children’s theater and theater education. My research is in community youth arts (CYA), and this emerged from my work with the Community Partnership Program at ASU, which was the community-partnership arm for the College of Fine Arts. The office linked the College of Fine Arts university resources with the community through such programs as Maestra/Maestro and ArtsBridge. So, my research in CYA has intersected my professional experience with socially committed regional theater and my work from within the university to establish community arts partnerships.

Community Youth Arts and the Third Space

My dissertation examined community youth-arts history, policies and programs. I define CYA as: nonschool-based youth arts programs that link artists and arts organizations with community youth organizations during out-of-school time. These are frequently partnerships between schools, universities, arts organizations and community centers, and include juvenile justice, homeless populations and social-welfare programs. They are located in places where youth congregate, and they rely on partnerships between arts and nonarts groups.

Frequently such programs serve populations of young people from socio-economically challenged and disenfranchised communities who are identified as underprivileged, underserved, primarily minority and "at-risk." Consequently, arts specialists frequently cross ethnic and socio-economic borders to work with young people in the interest of community and cultural development.

Community youth-arts history can be traced through the progressive movement and Settlement House experiments at the turn of the last century when educated middle- and upper-class white men and women settled in immigrant urban communities in order to provide a place where newly arrived immigrants could experience what it meant to be an “American,” and also to celebrate their cultures of origin. The arts were a central means of communication between these different classes and groups. In addition to acculturation, the Settlements were concerned with urban reform, involved with the parks and playground movements, child labor laws, education, health and families. They viewed neighborhoods as central to life, the point of daily departure and return, and it was this idea of place that historian Shannon Jackson writes about in her Settlement House history, "Lines of Activity." Jackson said the Settlements created a metaphorical space cleared to explore communities of difference, and one way this was done was through the arts.

In a sense, CYA as it is practiced today, is rooted in this notion of place and the function of the arts within this metaphorically cleared space, this ideologically free and aesthetically neutral third space that is created through the arts encounter and between communities of difference. However, I challenge the idea that this encounter constructed as between communities of difference can be ideologically free or politically neutral – especially considering how youth are constructed as at risk, dangerous and in need of containment.

The Arts Education Partnership recently published a book titled "Third Space: When Learning Matters," which argues for the ability of the arts to build communities and bring people together through the arts in after-school and school-based programs. Gary Oldenburg wrote about the characteristics of Third Places in his book "The Great Good Place," and the characteristics of friendliness, a home away from home, a bridge between home and work and neutral space harken back to the ideals of the Settlements, and bear remarkable similarities to the characteristics that are identified as essential to successful community youth organizations.

Arts Learning and Out of School Time

CYA is distinguished from other types of arts-learning activities that involve youth, in several fundamental ways. In 2002, the NEA restructured its arts-learning program to include Pre-K, K-12 school-based and community-based. This was the first time in the history of the federal arts program that there was a formal category for recognizing the activities in the arts that take place outside of school.

Community youth arts are distinguished from arts-in-education, with its focus on in-school academic achievement, and arts residencies, typically conducted through partnerships with local arts organizations and with a focus on performance and audience development. Community youth arts are nonschool-based, including summer, weekends, and after school, may be housed in community youth organizations, parks and recreation and other places where youth congregate; they focus on youth development, where the arts are “fun,” while also building social capital, and increasing parental and involvement with youth. Differing from “enrichment models,” of after-school programs, community youth arts are research-based, focus on youth as resources, and are often delivered through university-community collaborations and other kinds of partnerships.

The last four years have seen a proliferation of community youth organizations (CYOs), and in the after-school or Out of School Time movement. The Carnegie Foundation reported in "A Matter of Time" that youth spend only 26% of their time in school, and CYOS are becoming an essential part of the bridging the institutional gap that exists for youth between the end of the school time and the time that adult caregivers get home in the evening. Crime statistics show that the most dangerous time for youth are between 3 and 6 p.m., and current CYOS are only going to be able to fill 40% of the need.

Federal guidelines require that after-school programs offer youth development opportunities that include arts and music to enhance academic components, increase parental involvement and provide a “safe haven” for youth after school. The National Institute of Out of School Time, the Harvard Family Research Project and others support OST through research and evaluation of “best practices.” Research shows that the arts have a positive impact on youth in high-risk environments, enhancing self-esteem, improving academic performance and deterring youth from crime.

Challenges include securing qualified staff, enrolling students and attendance, developing curriculum, building relationships with schools and staff, developing operating procedures and reaching out to families and communities.

21st Century Community Learning Centers* and the Phoenix Arts Commission

While at ASU, I was contracted to conduct the first-year evaluation for the City of Phoenix Arts’ Commission (PAC) five-year U.S. Department of Education 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) grant project. What was exciting in this for me is that it allowed me to apply the research I had been doing to work in the field.

What was unique about this program design was that in addition to targeting the youth for interventions in academic improvement, youth development and family involvement, the project focused on increasing the education-organizational capacity of local arts organizations and developing a cadre of highly experienced teaching artists who could work in-depth with the schools during after-school time over the course of five years. So, teaching artists participated in rigorous evaluations. They participated in focus groups, in training sessions on evaluation and standards-based curriculum development.

Research and Funding for CYA: Ramification for Higher Education

Researcher Shirley Brice Heath did a ten-year study about CYOs and found that the most successful ones included the arts. In her study, she found that the arts created opportunities for young people to take healthy risks, to learn abstract thinking skills and most important, to take responsibilities, to feel needed, and to learn new and interesting skills that extend their social capital.

The Wallace Foundation recently spearheaded a five-year study on community arts in higher education. The result was four new community arts degree programs that have youth and the training of community artists to work with youth, as a central focus of these programs. Universities are important collaborators in the field of community arts, through programs that train community artists and scholars to work with youth in third spaces and alternative settings.

Given that youth spend only 26% of their time in school, and that the public spaces or plazas where youth are welcome to congregate have disappeared from America, that youth need something to do, to feel needed and to learn skills, that current CYOs will soon be able to fulfill only 40% of the need, and that 90% of artists can expect to teach at some point in their careers, community youth arts have a huge role to fill, which has significant ramifications for higher education.

How can we participate in challenging the notion of dangerous youth who need to be contained by the arts, and respond to the challenge of engaging with youth as resources, as artists who have the potential to earn a living in the arts, or learn important skills, and provide opportunities to safely explore risk-taking and learn important leadership skills?

Advocacy is built from quality arts programs delivered by expert teaching artists and arts educators. Students, parents, teachers, and principals are the strongest advocates and this comes from quality arts experiences delivered by professionals who can develop curriculum aligned with youth development goals and academic achievement. Teaching artists naturally evaluate; it is part of the reflective practice of the creative arts. The OST field includes the arts and identifies as one of its major challenges the securing of experienced project managers, staff and evaluators. Pre-service teaching artists and community youth-arts practitioners must be adequately prepared to conduct arts experiences with high risk populations, and universities have an important role in helping to prepare them.

I am interested in the role of higher education, and especially in the field of community arts, in preparing future arts leaders, artists and educators in working with youth. As part of the new University of Oregon Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy, I have begun to explore issues associated with professional development in teaching the arts in community settings. This was one of the reasons I was so interested in coming to work in community arts here: the potential to work within the Center and the community to become part of the dialogues that are increasing all over the country about professional development in teaching the arts, and I believe that we are in a unique position here to help shape those conversations.

Arts educators have been arguing the question of who teaches the arts and what they teach since the NEA and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act were established in 1965. Who delivers the arts to the schools? Arts-education specialists argue that artist residencies don’t deliver pedagogically sound curriculum, and that artists should not be in the position of teaching if they are not trained in sound, age-appropriate curriculum development and standards-based arts-learning and assessment strategies. After all, you would not place an uncertified teacher to teach your children in the general classroom, why is it okay to place an uncertified artist to teach the arts?

Research Plans: Teaching in the Third Space

I am planning a research project that addresses the question of who teaches the arts and what they teach, and then contextualizing this in terms of larger issues going on at the state-level with arts learning and national conversations about professional development. In my dream world, we would collaborate with the other arts disciplines to develop a certificate program for artists who want to teach, at the undergraduate, graduate and community levels.

There are some amazing developments in the field of community arts partnerships and CYA, in conjunction with centers positioned in higher education. For instance, Columbia College Chicago’s new Master of Arts in Youth and Community Development works closely with its Center for Community Arts Partnerships and the multimedia program to do amazing work with youth in the community using arts and digital media. California College of the Arts has a new Center for Art and Public Life and a brand new community arts degree that focuses on working with youth. Maryland Institute College of Art has a new Masters in Community Arts administered through their Center for Art Education. Each of these centers has three primary focus areas – research, program development and academic coursework, they focus on leadership in community youth arts, and are wonderful models for us to explore through the CCACP and new initiatives emerging in School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

I think that both of these fit into the new missions and priorities for the School and University. If we don’t pay attention to future artists and arts-supporters and our responsibility to arts education in its broader sense, we will be graduating our future students with no arts experiences., and our artists without the ability to respond to current and future needs in the field of youth arts.

Lori Hager is an assistant professor in the Arts and Administration Program, School of Architecture & Allied Arts at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She is the coordinator of the undergraduate community-arts minor and co-coordinator of the graduate community-arts concentration, and associate director for community arts for the Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy. She holds a B.A. in anthropology, and a Ph.D. in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University.

* "The 21st CCLC Program is a key component of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. It is an opportunity for students and their families to continue to learn new skills and discover new abilities after the school day has ended. Congress has appropriated $981,166,230 for after-school programs in Fiscal Year 2006. The focus of this program, re-authorized under Title IV, Part B, of the No Child Left Behind Act, is to provide expanded academic enrichment opportunities for children attending low performing schools. Tutorial services and academic enrichment activities are designed to help students meet local and state academic standards in subjects such as reading and math. In addition 21st CCLC programs provide youth development activities, drug and violence prevention programs, technology education programs, art, music and recreation programs, counseling and character education to enhance the academic component of the program." (From the 21st CCLC Web site.)

Linda Frye Burnham is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network.

Original CAN/API publication: October 2006