DETROIT CREATIVITY PROJECT

The Detroit Creativity Project engages young people in Detroit and neighboring cities through the art of improvisation. Our mission is to inspire and empower our students to reach for their potential through creative experiences that foster social and emotional learning and build literacy.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has been shown to positively impact academic outcomes, as well as promote behaviors like sharing and empathy, improve attitudes toward school, and reduce anxiety and depression.

The arts are also increasingly recognized as a valuable component of STEM programs, or STEAM, because they foster a curiosity for learning and creative approach to problem solving.

We focus on developing and funding quality programs for Detroit area students who would not otherwise have access because of where they live or their family's income.

We established an Artistic Advisory group in 2016 to develop a new applied improv program that would more directly foster social and emotional learning for our students.

That new course was piloted with 74 Detroit high school students in the winter of 2016. We plan to bring this program to 4 schools this fall.

We have developed a set of school selection criteria to ensure that our programs serve youth who would not otherwise have access to this type of programming.

We evaluate our programs twice yearly, and include feedback from students, classroom teachers, and our teaching artists to continually improve our programs and ensure their compliance with State performance standards for the performing arts.

Our partners for The Improv Project and the applied improv program include:

The Schools. Each school provides classroom space and a school representative, who is our program liaison.

Y Arts, the arts division of YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit. We collaborate with Y Arts to administer our programs. We work closely with Margaret Edwartowski, Executive Director of Arts, to provide daily program oversight, conduct staff background screenings and orientation, coordinate program evaluation, and help facilitate annual professional development for the teaching artists.

The Institute for Arts Infused Education, Marygrove College. We will be using new evaluation tools developed with Mary Lou Greene, Director of the Institute for Arts Infused Education at Marygrove College to evaluate our programs in 2017-18.

The Improv Project began in 2012 with 100 middle and high school students and now serves over 750 youth annually. Our students represent a diversity of ethnic and cultural groups from Detroit, Hamtramck, River Rouge, and Dearborn. Most of our students live in under-resourced communities and are considered economically disadvantaged by federal measures.

We continue to expand our programming by developing relationships with new schools and nonprofit service organizations who are interested in providing youth improv training.

The UM study shows that we have the greatest impact when our students are engaged in our programs. We continue to focus on strategies to improve student participation and their overall school attendance. In April 2016, Dr. Paul Hernandez led our teaching artists in a full day of training in techniques to more fully connect with at-risk youth.

We are committed to working with our partners and Detroit area improv theaters to promote increased diversity in the improv community and in our teaching artist team. We do this, in part, by seeking out opportunities for our graduates to perform and further their improv training. We are currently working with a local improv theater on a plan that would provide tuition support for our graduates who are interested in continuing their improv training.

We began an internship program in 2017 to work toward increasing the diversity of our teaching artist team. Our senior teaching artists have been mentoring an intern artist who brings Spanish-speaking capability to our teaching staff.

This fall we are also collaborating with a new partner to provide our teaching artists with a series of workshops focused on social justice and cultural competency.