Core Arts: Mississippi Arts Commission and Communities in Schools Greenwood LeFlore

Over the past two decades, there has been a notable surge of arts-in-juvenile-justice initiatives implemented by state arts councils. South Dakota, California, Alabama and Idaho are notable examples of this community arts tide. Some programs have been successful and continue on; some were abandoned. And a few have been both highly successful and then terminated owing to political attitudes, economics or a combination of the two. The tendency of these and other pioneering state arts agencies has been to opt for a single program delivery system — generally a partnership such as a state arts organization collaborating with a state juvenile-justice entity (Alabama) or an array of prescribed partnerships between a single type of provider, such as local arts councils, with common juvenile-justice partners like county probation departments (Idaho). This high-concept approach to community arts programming for young offenders has its virtues: It is codified and follows a distinct pathway in its development so is easily replicated and understood (evaluated). However, there can be detriments to this system as well. Using a rural maxim, a forest with only one type of tree makes the forest vulnerable to pests and environmental changes that a mixed forest can better endure.

In Mississippi, the Core Arts juvenile-justice program has been growing steadily, surviving all the afflictions that have plagued other state arts councils. And it seems to have done so because the designers opted for a varied and holistic approach to programming — xeriscaping with the environment at hand rather than importing a successful model or opting for a single homegrown species. This does not mean the designers of Core Arts at the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC) disregarded the practices and principles of the emerging arts-in-juvenile-justice field.

The designers of Core Arts adopted two initial principles from the community arts field and then adopted a third as the program developed:

An “expansion” principle evolved in the third year of the program when Communities in Schools Greenwood LeFlore (CIS) emerged from the status of new local provider in the Delta to the state-wide “umbrella” implementation agency of Core Arts in partnership with MAC. With ongoing funding to rapidly expand the program, this third principle of program design was adopted:

With these principles in mind, Core Arts managed to survive a rocky beginning and can now be found in every region of the state.

In the summer of 1999, the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC) announced a new grant fund to support arts programs for court-involved youth throughout the state. Three initial sites were funded for three years each with plans to add new sites each year thereafter. Sites completing their three-year funding cycle would enter the general project grant pool of MAC. The name of the project, Core Arts, held echoes of Mississippi’s grassroots civil-rights era, and was intended not to be a pilot or demonstration project but a permanent, ongoing attempt by the state arts council to help the State Legislature address the dramatic need of reducing juvenile crime.

One of Mississippi’s distinctly negative traits is its high rate of poverty and underdeveloped economy. In this predominantly rural state with few detention centers or state correctional facilities, Mississippi’s judges were severely limited in sentencing options, and too often a single probation officer served multiple counties alone. The funding-strapped Legislature looked to community-based corrections remedies rather than the much more expensive approach of increased incarceration. Betsy Bradley, then director of MAC, saw the advantages that a community arts approach could provide and approached the Legislature with success stories from other state arts councils (like South Dakota with its ArtsCorr program) and with evaluation materials that suggested dramatically reduced recidivism rates could be accomplished (data from the Seattle Children’s Museum — Coming up Taller 1999). To reinforce Bradley’s case, MAC funded its own pilot project in 1998 with the Lowndes County Juvenile Court. Bill Cleveland was hired as a consultant and evaluator, and the project was able to document successful outcomes with the participant youth at the Lowndes County Detention Center. Bradley convinced legislators that what had been done elsewhere could also be done in Mississippi, albeit with a unique Mississippi style.

In 1999, MAC distributed a Core Arts Request for Proposals with an eligibility requirement that the grantee be a nonprofit and that it have a workable plan for providing high quality arts instruction to court-involved youth, not at-risk youth but youth who actually appeared before a juvenile court judge. MAC also contracted with Grady Hillman (the author) to provide technical assistance to the sites alongside Cleveland. I was then the technical assistance provider for a federal initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Arts Programs for Juvenile Offenders in Detention and Corrections.

There were only four Core Arts applications in 1999, and the first three grantees were Grace Outreach Ministry in Jasper County, Region 8 Mental Health in Jackson and Family Network Partnership, an extension of the School of Social Work at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg that had developed a holistic model for working with youth in housing developments inclusive of arts programs.

Before applying for Core Arts funds, Grace Outreach had already been providing music programs to youth in Jasper County. With the support of a local family-court judge, it proposed to develop a multi-arts program for youth on probation in this very rural county along with neighboring Clarke County. There was no detention center in either county, no Adolescent Offender Program, no juvenile-probation department. In its first year, Grace Outreach opted to work with the judge to develop alternative sentencing programs for youth, adjudicating them to after-school arts programs held in area schools. This program worked but was very cumbersome owing to the vast transportation needs of youth to get to workshops from a two-county area. Eventually, it evolved into an arts magnet approach at two alternative schools where youth were remanded for disciplinary referrals — one in Heidelberg, the other Bay Springs. It was determined that youth in the program met the criteria for participation because a high percentage, more than 80%, were on juvenile probation. Opting for an entrepreneurial workforce training approach — Heidelberg integrated visual arts and ceramics into the alternative school curriculum.

After its third year, Heidelberg did not come back to MAC for grant support. The program worked well, but the director had become principal of the Heidelberg Alternative School and was overwhelmed with both church and school duties. She also found it difficult to keep solid working artists in such a remote locale.

The purpose of this organization is to provide mental-health services to Mississippians in a four county area south of and including a portion of Jackson. The organization’s interest in Core Arts derived from a longstanding relationship with Mississippi art therapists, and together they perceived a need among youth offenders for art-therapy services. This presented a problem for MAC dedicated as it was to supporting practicing professional artists. An agreement was worked out that art therapists could deliver workshops through Core Arts so long as they had a creditable professional art portfolio and wore the hat of an artist and not a therapist when they conducted the residencies. Region 8 began with summer and after-school workshops for probationers at its office, but like Heidelberg, it found a more productive and stable environment in two alternative schools for pre-teens. After the second year of programming, Region 8 did not come back to MAC for funds but found full and ongoing support for its art program through the Mississippi Department of Health, a Division of Children and Youth Services.

This organization is an extension of the School of Social Work at the University of Southern Mississippi. It was created as a youth-development program for Hattiesburg housing developments and Section 8 housing. With funding from Core Arts, it created an arts center at the Robertson Place Apartments (documentation determined that 75% of the youth living in the housing development and participating in the art programs were court-involved) and provided artists to work with the Pine Belt Adolescent Offender Program, an after-school program for probationers, and the Forrest County Detention Center. With a strong cadre of community artists, graduate students and USM art faculty, FNP has been able to provide very high-quality instruction, producing public murals, sculptures and book publications while providing an excellent service-learning model for students from the School of Social Work.

The second year of funding added the Jackson County Children’s Coalition located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Pascagoula and the Greenville Arts Council. The Jackson County Children’s Coalition located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Pascagoula was a nonprofit organization devoted to improved communication and cooperation between key children’s service organizations; the Greenville Arts Council in the Mississippi Delta became the first true local arts agency to join the fold.

The JCCC was a natural site for a Core Arts program. Its offices were located in the Jackson County Detention Center, and it had strong relationships with local arts organizations and artists as well as other community providers of arts and recreation activities for youth. Facing rising rates of juvenile delinquency accompanying the casino economy, the JCCC was looking for creative solutions. Contracting directly with experienced community artists, the JCCC began providing intensive arts programs at the Detention Center and at three county alternative schools: Ocean Springs Alternative School, Moss Point Alternative School and the Pascagoula Opportunity Center.

The Greenville Arts Council was not the original beneficiary of the Core Arts program. The grantee was the Washington County Board of Supervisors acting for a Juvenile Counselor with the Division of Youth Services. In the second year of funding, the Greenville Arts Council stepped in and assumed the lead on the project. In its first year, the counselor had introduced Core Arts projects in an after-school boot camp, an after-school Adolescent Offender Program, the local detention center and an alternative school in the neighboring community of Leland. The Greenville Arts Council took on these programs and saw them through a successful second year, but budget cuts caused the demise of the boot camp, withdrawal of the program from the detention center and withdrawal of matching grants from the Board of Supervisors. However, the Core Arts program in Washington County maintained its services at the AOP and the Leland Alternative School while expanding its program to Garrett Hall, the Greenville alternative school. It was able to accomplish this through a partnership with its new sibling Core Arts program Communities in Schools in Greenwood, just 70 miles away.

In the third year of MAC’s implementation of the Core Arts program, Communities in Schools Greenwood Leflore (CIS) was added to the Core Arts family of providers and the program began a significant evolutionary change, continuing implementation of arts programs, primarily in the responsive alternative schools and after-school Adolescent Offender Programs, but with a single lead provider.

Located on Highway 82 in the middle of the Mississippi Delta, CIS in Greenwood has become the state-wide hub of Core Arts activity and leadership. An affiliate of the national organization by the same name, CIS saw its traditional role as a tutoring service for at-risk youth eroded by the implementation of No Child Left Behind, which put the onus of helping low-achieving students directly on the school districts. Armed with evaluation data (Champions of Change) demonstrating how arts instruction enhances academic achievement, CIS reframed its mission to become a provider of educational improvement and workforce training through arts-based curricula.

Providing the leadership for this transformation is the highly skilled CIS Executive Director, Linda Whittington. Before coming to CIS, Linda was a working actor in Fort-Worth-based Hip Pocket Theater. Her day job in Fort Worth involved managing the youth arts outreach of Imagination Celebration. After Fort Worth, she was director of the El Dorado Arts Council in Arkansas. With over 14 years of experience in nonprofit arts management and presented with CIS’ organizational need to move away from tutoring, Whittington had already begun changing CIS into a community arts provider before she was aware of Core Arts.

CIS received its Core Arts grant in 2001 and found that the goals of the program meshed well with its organizational mission. With a secure funding line from the State Attorney General’s office, CIS began expanding the model, initiating new sites without direct MAC funding but in consultation with MAC staff and the aforementioned consultants.

In 2005, Malcolm White became the director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, and in late 2006 (after the Katrina impact began to abate), he began discussions with the consultants Hillman and Cleveland, CIS’s Whittington and MAC community arts staffers Judi Cleary and Allison Winstead toward reframing Core Arts from a grants program to a partnership between MAC and CIS, strategically expanding the model throughout the state. In 2006, MAC and CIS began hosting a series of meetings with state education and juvenile-justice representatives to create an understanding of how the arts, alternative education and the juvenile-justice system could utilize Core Arts to better serve the youth and their communities. In 2007, MAC and CIS shed the grants process and entered into a contractual relationship. MAC continued to provide some program money to CIS for specific sites, and it continued to contract with Hillman and Cleveland as consultants to the project to facilitate Core Arts expansion, implementation and oversight; CIS would manage the program and include MAC in its advocacy efforts around the state to promote the role of the arts.

CIS has been able to develop sustainable programs with “hard” money to attract designated “soft” money contracts for Core Arts programming from entities like Morgan Freeman’s Rock River Foundation ($10,000 for Core Arts expansion in Tallahatchie County), the National Endowment for the Arts ($20,000 to develop creative-writing programs in five Mississippi alternative schools) as well as a recent five year 21st Century Grant to partner with Delta Boys and Girls Clubs in 7 Delta communities.

The overall strategy devised by CIS and MAC for program implementation were derived from the aforementioned federal initiative as documented in “Arts Programs for Juvenile Offenders in Detention and Corrections: A Guide to Promising Practices,” specifically, a rigorous, challenging skills-based curriculum taught by practicing artists, and a program that conformed to the juvenile-justice cycle so that court-involved youth would have access to arts programming at every stop in the system -- prevention (after-school arts programs at Boys and Girls Clubs to engage high-risk youth and programs at alternative schools where youth are remanded by schools for disciplinary reasons), intervention (arts programs in adolescent-offender programs, detention centers and state training schools) and after-care (arts programs in alternative schools where youth are remanded after incarceration, Boys and Girls Club programs, and community-based arts programs for non-adjudicated youth ).

At the time of this writing, CIS provides Core Arts programs to ten Adolescent Offender Programs, seven alternative schools, Oakley Training School for Boys, Columbia Training School for Girls, the Greenwood Detention Center, six Boys and Girls Clubs and a community center for court-involved youth in 12 counties spanning the state. Between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2007, CIS provided 2,100 Mississippi court-involved youth with skills-based, artist-taught workshops at the sites described above. Approximately, 30 artists are working in the program at present with sites averaging two artists for ten hours each per week. The standard program design is that artists are contracted to meet with two classes per week twice a week at each site. In Grenada, Yazoo City, Charleston and Winona, artists are working at multiple sites in the aforementioned prevention/intervention/after-care array. The goal is to “hook” the youth on the arts experience in the juvenile-justice system and encourage them to continue that arts experience, often with the same artists, in a mainstream community arts setting.

Demographically, 90% of the student particpants are African American, and a large majority are males aged 13-16. Class sizes are generally limited to ten students at a time, allowing for more individualized attention. Some alternative-school creative-writing class sizes are larger since the creative-writing program is integrated into the language arts classes, but alternative schools never reach the class sizes of middle-school language-arts classes.

All residencies result in two culminating events per year, one in December and one in May, where student work is presented to the public and sold, with all revenues returned to the producing students; students also have the option of keeping their work but are encouraged to exhibit it. Creative-writing students have their work published in an anthology that is presented to the public with student readings and distributed state-wide. Seven perfect-bound editions of student creative writing have been published to date. CIS has also opened a gallery space in Greenwood where student work can be continuously presented, providing students incarcerated at the two training schools a venue for their work along with the other students at community venues.

A significant component of the Core Arts program occurs at Mississippi’s two state correctional facilities for youth: the Oakley Training School (male) and the Columbia Training School (female). CIS began providing visual-arts and creative-writing residencies in January of 2005 at Oakley. Oakley students also participated in ArtCartTraz, an art car project entered in the Orange Show’s 17th Annual “Everyone’s Art Car Parade” in Houston where it was viewed by over 200,000 spectators and won First Place in the “Best Entry by a Youth Group” category. The Oakley program has been replicated at the Columbia Training School, with creative writing and ceramics, as of October 2005. Due to the demonstrated success of these programs, CIS has entered into Memoranda of Agreement with the Mississippi Department of Human Services to annually provide 50 weeks each of painting and drawing/ceramics classes and creative writing at Oakley and 44 weeks of the same two curricular strands at Columbia. The leadership of CIS in delivering effective arts programming for court-involved youth was recognized by a gubernatorial appointment of CIS Director Linda Whittington to a four-year term on the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee of the state legislature in 2006. In 2007, a state legislative seat became open in the Greenwood area, and Whittington was asked to run for the vacant seat by the Democratic Party. She won and currently serves on the Corrections Committee of the Legislature.

With its center of operation in Greenwood, CIS owns and is renovating a 19,000-sq.-ft, building to be used as a training and art center for area residents. At present, it hosts a community ceramics cooperative and provides summer media and ceramics camps for area youth along with a street-side gallery of youth artwork.. When completed, the planned Greenwood Community Arts Center will also host painting, culinary arts, photography and theater programs, two galleries and a black-box theater.

The greatest difficulty Core Arts and CIS have faced is the identification and recruitment of practicing artists to deliver the programs. Most of the sites are quite distant from urban or academic cultural centers. While CIS has offered theater, print-making, video, music and an array of visual arts, its two primary offerings are ceramics and creative writing, which derive from the cultural resources and traditions of Mississippi; all CIS offerings attempt to link participants to the cultural heritage of the state. The Mississippi Delta is rich in a variety of clays and has been a hub of ceramic activity since humans first visited the area. It is the home of many current pottery studios, particularly in rural settings. In the literary field, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright are just a few of the names of writers associated with the state. Strong creative-writing programs at state universities and a state rich with native writers provide another arts resource for programming.

In general, Core Arts is designed as an artist mentorship or guild-type program with curricula derived from the developed skills and work accomplishments of the contracted artists. The workshop process is driven by product goals — an exhibit, book publication or performance at the end of the eight-to-16-week residency. However, new artists are generally teamed with veteran artists for the first week or two of workshops and thereafter continue independently. All artists receive a juvenile-justice orientation from me regarding issues of confidentiality and classroom management.

Writers are provided a copy of “Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program Curriculum Guide” developed by the Alabama Writers Forum for use in its state correctional facilities for youth. This serves as a useful resource for the writers, but they are not required to adhere to it. They also receive copies of the Core Arts anthologies, which they can use as aides in the classroom. Samples of published writing by previous workshop students inspire the new writers and make them more confident.

Visual artists share techniques and classroom strategies through the aforementioned mentorship relationships, through correspondence on the Internet, at culminating events and formally at the annual Core Arts retreat where discipline-based groups carry on one-day curriculum development sessions. Many of the artists are also active in the MAC Whole Schools Program, which has developed arts-integrated curricula for the traditional classroom. Core Arts artists also attend professional-development opportunities of the Mississippi Arts Educators Association with funding from CIS if they so choose.

CIS has a history of curriculum development for after-school youth. In October of 2002, CIS received a three-year Cultural Partnership grant from the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Enhancement, to develop arts and humanities programs for academically at-risk middle- and high-school youth in Leflore County, Mississippi. The CIS Cultural Partnerships Project created after-school curricula in the following areas: Visual Arts (ceramics and print making), Performing Arts (creative writing/poetry performance, drama and video production) and Heritage Studies (local Blues history, Native American history and Civil Rights history). In Cleveland, Miss., CIS partners with the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University, which has created a Mississippi Delta culture curriculum for implementation with after-school youth. This project, called The Delta Heritage Lighthouse Partnership, has been operational for five years and has been funded by a Corporation for National and Community Service Grant administered by the University of Southern Mississippi.

Core Arts was initiated by the Mississippi Arts Commission as a state-wide arts-in-juvenile-justice grants program with a strong advocacy effort supported by evaluation and best-practice models, well publicized youth exhibits and performances derived from workshops led by practicing artists, and a diverse array of community arts providers. A vigorous technical assistance program was provided by outside consultants under the supervision of a dedicated staff person at the arts council. Three years into the program, the most receptive venues for Core Arts were alternative schools and after-school probation programs that fit the mission needs of a significant Core Arts provider, Communities in Schools Greenwood LeFlore. CIS adopted Core Arts as its primary community program and expanded it throughout the state with sustainable revenues. Currently, Core Arts operates as a partnership between the state arts council and CIS and is replicating at a steady pace. However, Core Arts greatest strength seems to derive from its developmental arc and the philosophy that each site will be unique in its growth and development, drawing from community-specific resources: community artists and regional culture and heritage.

This essay is part of the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, 2008, funded by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant to the Maryland Institute College of Art. The essay was reviewed and selected by the project's Editorial Board: Ron Bechet, Xavier University of Louisiana; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Ken Krafchek, Maryland Institute College of Art; Sonia Mañjon, California College of the Arts; Amalia Mesa-Bains, California State University Monterey Bay; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; and Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University.

Grady Hillman has worked with arts-in-corrections programs in Europe, South America and the U.S. He directed the national initiative Arts Programs for Juvenile Offenders in Detention and Corrections, and wrote the accompanying “Guide to Promising Practices.” He co-authored “Artists in the Community: Training Artists to Work in Alternative Settings” and is currently serving arts-in-juvenile-justice programs in Mississippi, Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Iowa and Texas.

Alabama Writers’ Forum. Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program. Montgomery Ala.: Alabama Writers’ Forum and Alabama Department of Youth Services, 2002.

Ezell, M. A Changed World: Experimental Gallery Evaluation of the Second and Third Year. Seattle: University of Washington, 1998.

Fiske, Edward B., ed. Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning. Washington, D.C.: Arts Education Partnership, 1999.

Hillman, G. Arts Programs for Juvenile Offenders in Detention and Corrections: A Guide to Promising Practices. Washington D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and National Endowment for the Arts, 2002.

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Core Arts: Mississippi Arts Commission and Communities in Schools Greenwood LeFlore

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