A Delicate Balance: Principles and Practices Of Promising Arts And Humanities Programs
Being available means more than providing activities. It means creating a location children can come to over time for a variety of reasons; a place that is a stable element in their lives. For instance, The 52nd Street Project, in looking for new space, made it a priority to move back into the heart of the neighborhood it serves and to find space suitable for youth to just drop in.
The challenges of building and maintaining sustained, long-term programs are considerable. Raising general support and multiyear funds, particularly in the midst of government funding cuts and over-stretched foundation resources, is very difficult. While the hybrid nature of these programs--part arts and humanities and part youth development--is one of their strengths, it makes fund-raising efforts more difficult. "The frustration is, some funders can be remarkably and painfully inflexible in their areas of interest," observes Capanna.
Effective programs exist in institutions committed for the long term. For Robert Capanna, offering sustained programming and a stable community home-away-from-home is not just practical, but moral. It is "cruel" to bring children into a positive environment that cannot be sustained. "You have to commit to being there for kids for all of the time that you've said you are going to be there. So if it is a 3-year program, you have to be funded for 6 years, so that the kids coming in at the beginning and the kids leaving at the end both have the full range of the 3-year experience....If you are going to build a relationship with the community, you have to say, 'We are here, we are it, and we are going to keep doing this. We are really committed to doing it.'"