The growing, national collective action around the emerging field of creative youth development continued last week at the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s conference.
Local and national partners reflected on the ways in which we can each support youth-centered programs in the arts, sciences, and humanities while also building capacity as a field—an imperative from the National Summit on Creative Youth Development hosted by MCC earlier this year.
As we tackled questions such as How might we capitalize on the strengths of individual leaders and programs, and How might joint efforts better serve youth?, the Guild’s Executive Director Jonathan Herman reminded us of the many creative youth development accomplishments that have unfolded this year:
- First-ever National Summit on Creative Youth Development held in March 2014 –
- attended by more than 200 people from 25 states and the District of Columbia who pledged some 86 commitments for action.
- forged a partnership between Massachusetts Cultural Council, National Guild for Community Arts Education, and President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities
- established a National Advisory Committee for this work
- commissioned research, “Setting the Agenda,” conducted by Lauren Stevenson in preparation for the Summit
- resulted in Collective Action for Youth: An Agenda for Progress through Creative Youth Development
- Subsequent Conference Presentations/ Professional Development
- Americans for the Arts’ “Research Roundup” (June 2014)
- Arts Education Partnership (September 2014)
- Grantmakers in the Arts (October 2014)
- National Assembly for State Arts Agencies (November 2014)
- Pre-conference workshop and CYD track at Guild’s Conference for Community Arts Education (November 2014)
- Web Resources/Publications
- Massachusetts Cultural Council’s “Seen and Heard” Blog (March 2014)
- Article “Creative Youth Development Takes Hold” (June 2014)
- National Guild’s Creative Youth Development landing page (July 2014)
- GuildNOTES Article: “CYD Movement Takes Hold” by Denise Montgomery (Summer 2014)
- President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’s Creative Youth Development landing page as part of their National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards’ site (Sept 2014)
- Americans for the Arts’ national ARTSblog Salon on Creative Youth Development (September 2014)
And, First Lady Michelle Obama has adopted the term creative youth development when speaking about this work.
We’d like to hear from you: What are some accomplishments from your creative youth development work in 2014?
