Transforming Lives: An Overview Of Arts And Humanities Programs
Over an average year,
programs employ 3.5 permanent staff members, 23 volunteers and 9.2 consultants, primarily artists and scholars. The annual median number of staff is 2, with 5 volunteers and 8 consultants.
Most programs provide some type of training for people who work directly with youth. This training is likely to be provided in-house by more experienced personnel. Only one-third of the programs provide ongoing training, however. A majority of programs prefer staff who have had previous experience working with children and youth.
Who are the individuals working most closely with children in these programs? They are poets, actors, dancers, musicians, painters and museum curators, to be sure. They also are college teachers, historians,
recording technicians, commercial artists, mask-makers, muralists, electronic and print media experts, lawyers, public health
nurses, youth and social service workers, along
with many others.
Young Aspirations/Young Artists (YAYA) program in New Orleans teaches youth the occupational aspects of art by partnering juveniles with commercial artists every day after school and on weekends to work on projects and commissions, which they create and
then sell.
Television Executive Producer Chris Schueler staffs, along with lawyers from the University of New Mexico Institute for Public Law, FENCES, a computer-based interactive television show, produced by teens. Teens are exposed to writing, video production, editing, graphic development, set design and construction.
In Vermont, public health nurses are an integral part of the Read With Me: Teen Parent Project offered by the Vermont Council on the Humanities. Nurses identify interested teenagers and transport them and their infants to the literacy through children's literature program. Professors from local colleges, librarians and independent
scholars facilitate these
sessions.
Through home visits made by public health nurses, the project is able to extend its programs to teens unable to visit its site and to reinforce the importance of reading to a child among participants.
Most programs employ a small number of staff and make additional use of volunteers and consultants. "Consultant" is a category that includes the artists and scholars who work directly with children and youth. Each employee works long hours for modest pay and little job security, using his or her skills and energy to provide youth with new perspectives and new experiences.