YOUTH IN ARTS

Youth in Arts has shown tenacity and mission-focused drive through the COVID-19 crisis with clear response and service to our community. During the 2020-21 school year, we innovated to bridge equity gaps in arts education rooted in social justice, culturally responsive instruction, and an anti-ableist approach, focusing on accessibility. Celebrating 50 years during a crisis, YIA is entering a new chapter with renewed determination to our mission: to deliver direct arts education, educator support, and arts advocacy, with equity always at the center of our work. Currently the board and staff are participating in a strategic process, identifying emergent priorities on which to focus post-COVID-19 efforts. As part of this internal alignment of strategic priorities, there are 4 critical areas of deep organizational cultivation: 1) equity, representation, and inclusion; 2) pedagogy and framework; 3) financial model and sustainability; 4) community benefit. Together the team is thoughtfully working through each of these areas to outline a shared, actionable plan for the next 3 years as well as short-term goals with programmatic implications.

Cultivating Long Term Partnership Models
Our partnerships during the pandemic have demonstrated that dynamic service to our community can only be achieved in collaboration. Therefore, we are building on these lessons to develop deeper relationships, impact, and quality in our residencies. Returning to schools this year and serving more students in-person, we are strategically developing priorities for deeper roots and more branches to our work. Our goal is to cultivate more comprehensive relationships with school cohorts and districts. So often community-based organizations and direct service providers get caught in a year-to-year planning, funding, and hiring cycle that is not conducive to growth or impact. As a way to break this cycle and to support students and communities with innovative and responsive programs, Youth in Arts is looking to a new model.

We are working with 2 distinct cohort areas to build a multi-year, multi-school commitment to strategically pool resources, plan and scaffold program offerings unique to each community, and establish a more robust arts ecosystem across school sites or districts. These cohorts include 2 schools in West Contra Costa County and 5 schools in San Rafael City Schools; to whom we currently provide full year, multi-disciplinary residencies and support.

Developing multi-year partnerships with varied revenue sources, will result in stronger partnership cycles for hiring, program development, sustainability, and communication. In the growing geographic areas for partnerships, Youth in Arts proposes to develop our new model as a way to build a more comprehensive, multi-faceted, and consistent program and relationship with each school. Multi-year commitments would enable Youth in Arts to put in place strategic and intentional actions for more supportive program offerings at each school site.

The specific tactics and benefits include:
*More time to recruit, hire, and train teaching artists that are an ideal fit for the school population and community.
*More time and space to design artistic discipline-specific curriculum designed for the particular student population.
*Professional Development and on-boarding for school-based staff to ensure clear expectations, understanding of goals, and integration into school culture.
*More time to meet and plan with teachers and grade-level teams enabling YIA to make direct curricular, and school-wide thematic connections.
*Better retention of Teaching Artists year-to-year.
*Deeper relationships made with administration, school site staff, teachers, and parent community.
*Deeper relationships between artists and students.
*More opportunities for whole school events for students to share their work.

For more than 50 years, Youth in Arts has existed to achieve a seemingly simple goal: to bring quality arts education to students of ALL backgrounds and abilities. But our work is about so much more. It is about whole person development, identity, voice, discovery, imagination, and the freedom derived from access to creativity and art-making. Youth in Arts (YIA) is an education nonprofit founded in 1970 by local arts advocates dismayed by diminishing arts resources available for California students. YIA builds visual and performing arts skills through innovative and in-depth programs that foster confidence, compassion and resilience in students. We develop capacity among educators and teaching artists through intentional support efforts, advocate for equitable access to arts education and offer opportunities for young people to share their creative voices in their communities. Through direct education in school partnerships as well as through local and national advocacy, our programs change the lives of thousands in- and around San Francisco’s North and East Bays. YIA insists that access to a creative life is a right for all students.

Organizational representation and power shifts
Built on the legacy of previous leadership and work in organizational effectiveness, diversity, equity, and inclusion, Youth in Arts is working resolutely to increase representation in our board and staff as well as make shifts in our organizational structure to upset paradigms perpetuated by white supremacist systems and standards. This work is in motion as the Board of Directors has welcomed 4 new members in the last year, shifted and streamlined committee structure, and rewritten bylaws to create more access.

In the next two years, we are addressing internal structures and policies through the lens of equity. Currently, we are re-igniting our DEI Assessment of 5 key areas of our work; recognizing that a new assessment is necessary after more than 2 years of pandemic inactivity. Additionally, we are questioning how Mentor Artists (now employees) can have more voice and power within the dynamic of the organization. We are creating more full-time roles for artists; providing more dependable income and more agency within the organization. We are questioning and evaluating all policies; from hiring, to the employee handbook, to benefits provided. Aligned with our people-centered emergent priority, we are building in more accountability to our team, teachers, and board members with the intent of better serving students and families across our community.