Background & Program Description
When Gillian Eaton took the position of Vice-President for Arts and Humanities at the Metro Detroit YMCA in 2007, she was determined to employ an asset-based approach to program development. Understanding that Detroit is a beleaguered community in many ways, Eaton wanted to identify and build on strengths she knew existed in artists and individuals, and to design programs that harnessed creative energy in positive ways. One immediate goal was to gather a team of artists who would create and present work for public audiences at the Y as well as to teach and mentor young people, whom she believed had natural, untapped creative abilities. In addition to the obvious art forms such as music, visual art, theatre and dance, Eaton saw great potential in media arts. The Y had a computer lab and some sophisticated video and photographic equipment. She believed that young people, adept at video games, would be drawn to the creative possibilities in media arts, and that such work had career potential for inner city youth as well.
To move this vision forward, Eaton sought to develop partnerships with other arts and non arts entities who worked in community and youth development. Early in her tenure she met with Beverly Ortman, Program Director for the McComb County Abstinence Partnership. Ortman had received a grant of $600,000 each year for the next five years from the federal government’s Department of Children and Family Welfare in order to reach at-risk youth with messages of abstinence and healthy choices. Initially, Ortman asked Eaton to create a film about healthy choices, which she did in a one-week camp for youth. Inspired by the Youth Institute in Long Beach, California, Eaton then developed the idea of a longer summer camp for troubled inner-city Detroit youth which would focus on creative expression, character and career development. McComb County had the funding; Eaton had the space, the artists and the equipment. The rest of the necessary funding came with the help of Brenda Price of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Other partners came on board during the design phase of what would become the Young Creatives Camp, as Eaton sought to identify the students whom the camp would serve. Don Bosco Hall is a 58-year old residential center for youth ages 7-17 who have been court ordered into treatment for delinquency, abuse or mental health reasons. Don Bosco had already been taking its younger children to the Y for after school programs, so when Eaton, who wanted to serve teenagers, approached its director, Duane Carter, in March 2008 about her idea for a summer camp, he was very receptive. Eaton also approached Latitia McCree, her colleague at the YMCA who runs the Y’s Metro Youth Collaborative (MYC). MYC operates in community centers and social service agencies such as Matrix Human Services and Youthville. One of its programs, the Young Community Investors (YCI), headed by Danielle Jenkins, focuses is on education, career and character development and college preparation. Through MYC, Eaton found another partner in Gear Up, an Oakland University program which addresses motivation and readiness for college in inner city youth from Oak Park and Pontiac.
From the beginning, Eaton’s goal was to fuse creative, artistic activity with career and character development and thereby open up a world of creative futures for the young people. She firmly believed that the teenage population she was targeting needed to exercise both sides of the brain and engage the whole person: mind, body and spirit. To do this, Eaton focused on five elements for the camp:
- Experience with multiple art forms including painting, pottery, poetry, music, theatre, choir, dance, video and photography
- Introduction to the career potential of each art form
Physical activity to balance the day including yoga, rock climbing, running and basketball - Mentorship with professional artists
- Discovery and development of new outlets for personal creative expression
To ensure student success, Eaton developed the following results-oriented goals:
- All students are enriched and have new self-confidence
- All students learn good work habits, make strong friendships and look forward to a bright future
- All students are actively interested in careers in the creative world
- All students are proud of their work and their accomplishments
Y-ARTS Artist/Educators are enriched and enlivened by the teaching experience - Y-ARTS and MYC set a standard of excellence for meaningful summer work
- All partners and collaborators are 100% happy with the YMCA
The YMCA community provides total support for continuing arts and media-based programming
The camp’s program design reinforced this philosophy and activated these goals. Twenty-five students from Don Bosco and twenty-five from Gear Up were divided into two groups, A and B. Two days a week for 7 weeks Group A attended the Young Creatives Camp at the Y and two days a week were spent with Matrix Human Services with the Young Community Investors of the Metro Youth Collaborative. Group B worked the same schedule on alternate days. On Fridays, both groups came together for a field trip related to the arts, media, career preparation or character development. (The camp ultimately included six students from Freedom House and several “floaters” as well.) Classes at the YMCA included Choir, Ceramics, Improv, Web Design, Video and Poetry as well as Yoga, Basketball and Hip-Hop.
Committed, qualified professional Artist/Educators were critical to the success of the camp. Tony Hepp, multimedia designer and filmmaker, and Randy Mauck, theatre technician, were the only full-time artists on board as the camp was being created. Other artists taught classes, created work or otherwise provided services to the Y on a part-time basis. From this pool of talent, and drawing on her vast array of contacts in the arts community from Detroit and beyond, Eaton assembled her team of 13 Artist/Educators. They included an actor, a theatre technician, visual artists, filmmakers, videographers, musicians and poets. All are professional artists who make their living creating artistic work (see sidebar, ARTIST EDUCATORS). Each is committed to teaching and mentoring young people. Some had experience working with at-risk students; for others this was a new challenge. All the artists planned their sessions around the need to grab the kids’ attention and make it personal. Each also emphasized the importance of process over product. The Artist/Educators enthusiastically supported one another during the camp, usually working in teams. Often there was an inter-disciplinary approach to the work as when the young actors were filmed during an improv session. The artists were also inspired by one another. As one artist put it, “We want to take each other’s classes!”
Not only were students expressing themselves creatively in a variety of media, they were also seeing career opportunities for themselves in the creative world. As Duane Carter from Don Bosco put it, teenagers discovered new possibilities for themselves as a result of working with professional artists who were not only skilled in their art form, but were also caring, compassionate and respectful of their young associates. Beverly Ortman, of the Macomb Abstinence Program, believes the program’s new motto, “Live Your Dream,” was actualized for these youth as they came to understand that healthy choices meant not just what they should do, but what they could do.
Weekly Friday field trips enhanced and reinforced the mind/body/spirit connection, as well as providing windows into further career possibilities. On a visit to Greenfield Village, the teenagers were invited to imagine what jobs were involved as they passed through the museum. Another week they attended the Puppet Art Theatre where they talked to the puppet master and saw a puppet show. One Friday they went to Ann Arbor and visited the University of Michigan campus in fulfillment of the MYC goal of making college visits. Another time the groups traveled to Holly for a day of canoeing, wall-climbing and water slide games. In this group of urban teenagers, there were many who had never had a lake experience and some who had never been in the water. The campers also went to Detroit’s WDIV Channel 4 studios where they visited the news room and observed how the weather reports are done. On the same day, they also visited Harmonie Recording Studios and saw what it takes to record a song. Each of these field trips was an occasion for discussion about the experience, how it related to or amplified the work they were doing in their classes at the Y and how their life choices and career possibilities might be impacted.
