Youth Arts
CMS Youth Programs use hands-on activities to help at-risk young people develop their individual talents and creative gifts.
Youth Arts
Youth Arts
connects working artists and poets with hundreds of high-risk Boston school children to help develop their self-esteem and discover the joys of creativity through the arts. Over the past seventeen years, Youth Arts has reached more than 1,500 students in the Boston area.
This bi-lingual program connects artists with students in their classrooms at inner-city elementary schools. Youth Arts serves primarily at-risk, low-income children who come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. This program employs the arts as a means to appeal to children’s multiple learning styles, furthering the children’s growth in all domains -- physical, cognitive, emotion and social. It helps children:
- enhance skills in language arts, problem solving, social studies and communications;
- develop awareness and understanding of themselves; and
- express their feelings and thoughts in a positive, safe and creative manner about topics including family life, community involvement, peer pressure, personal achievements and acts of violence.
CMS currently works collaboratively with three BPS elementary schools: the Curley and Hennigan Schools in Jamaica Plain and the Hurley School in the South End. Each year CMS’s three artists provide programming in drama, creative movement, poetry, puppetry and the visual arts to an average of 100 students in grades 2 through 5. Approximately 200 others benefit indirectly by attending performances, poetry readings, or workshops.
Youth Arts has earned a reputation among many other Boston school teachers who are also hoping to find the resources to implement this program in their schools.
Information Sheet [Adobe PDF]