The META Fellowship, a partnership between Mass Cultural Council and The Klarman Family Foundation, is the first program of its kind to convene a statewide community of music educators and teaching artists.

In an effort to make the learning of the Fellowship more broadly available, we are pleased to announce that the META Fellowship web site is now live. The site contains resources that were created to meet shared needs in classrooms throughout the Commonwealth and a list of professional development opportunities that Fellows utilized during the pilot program. As the second cohort of Fellows complete their Fellowship, more resources and tools will be added.

Read More

Join Mass Cultural Council for a two-part Trauma-Informed Practice Training with the Riverside Trauma Center.

The goal of this comprehensive two-day training is to prepare teaching artists and leaders in the cultural sector to deliver basic behavioral health disaster response skills to young people that have experienced trauma from large-scale disasters or critical events such as homicides, suicides, accidental deaths, and similarly distressing events. Participants will be presented with the evolution of efforts to assist survivors following trauma and provided with an overview of the human stress response and how it affects the choice of interventions with distressed individuals. The Post-Traumatic Stress Management (PTSM) continuum of interventions and the eight core functions of Psychological First Aid (PFA) will be taught.

The training comprises two 6.5 hour days.  Participants must commit to both days. Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are available.

Friday, October 18: Boston Children’s Museum
308 Congress St, Boston, MA

Saturday, October 26: Community Art Center
119 Windsor St # 6, Cambridge, MA

9-9:30am: Registration, coffee etc.
9:30am-12pm: Session time
12-1pm: Lunch
1-5pm: Session

The training is free and limited to two representatives  per organization.

For more information, contact Erik Holmgren at 617-858-2731.

Register Now

The National Youth Arts Summit Youth Planning Team is currently seeking proposals to present, perform, or share work at the 2019 National Young Artists Summit on Saturday, November 2 in Austin, TX. Young artists, ages 13-20, are encouraged to apply by Thursday, August 22, 5pm (ET). Honorariums are included.

Learn More

Adobe has some open opportunities available for Creative Youth Development organizations, including:

• Grants to support Projects & Collaborations (up to $7k)
• Hardware grants (up to $5k)
• Free access to Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom, In Design, etc.)
• Webinars to support learning across CYD organizations

There are currently about 50 organizations around the world that are engaged in the network through one or more of the above opportunities.

Learn more

Our national CYD network is collecting video URLs from practitioners that feature students’ voices and boldly and creatively tell their stories. Short videos will be embedded on the Creative Youth Development National Partnership website to help communicate our collective story more strategically to funders, government agencies, policy makers, organizations, artists, funders, researchers, and other stakeholders.

Submit your organization’s video URL and be included in our national story. This video directory is inclusive.

Video Guidelines

• 2-3 minutes average length
• prominent student voice
• demonstrate CYD core values of creativity, social justice, youth perspective

Submission Deadline: November 30, 2018

Share Your Video URLs

When: Saturday, November 17 in Baltimore, MD
Who: Young Artists and Creatives ages 13-24

This full-day Summit, entirely designed and led by young people, provides opportunities for youth leaders, ages 13-24, from a range of artistic disciplines, to connect, create, and celebrate.

The Summit has been planned by a core team of young artists from Baltimore, San Diego, and Detroit, who are working in concert with their peers across the country to shape this incredible experience. The Summit is free to youth, but pre-registration is required. Space is limited. Lunch is provided.

This event is being hosted in concert with the 2018 Conference for Community Arts Education, a national convening which aims to ensure all people have opportunities to maximize their creative potential.

TRAVEL STIPENDS AVAILABLE. REGISTER HERE NOW!

Logo Designed by Maya Brooks of the Youth Planning Committee

Questions: Contact Ashley Hare, CYD National Coordinator.

The Fourth International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC4) will be held in the U.S. for the first time in New York City September 13-15, 2018. [Previous conferences were held in Oslo (2012), Brisbane (2014), and Edinburgh (2016).] While the in-person conference is sold out, teaching artists are encouraged to attend digitally.

Digital conference goers will be able to participate online through a live stream of plenary sessions, curated interviews and conversations, along with access to special web-only content:

• Catch keynote presentations from Liz Lerman, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Aaron Huey.
• Join the first ITAC project as they create an historical timeline for the global field.
• Learn about and join the ITAC Collaborative that will continue between conferences.
• And sessions like:
  • Let Our Light Shine: Songwriting and Goal Attainment for Homeless Men with Mental Illness
  • Teaching Artists in International Development: Creating Safe Spaces for Challenging Power and Agency
  • The Moth: True Stories from Teaching Artists and Their Students
  • The Power of Parade to Build Community
  • The Responsibility of 21st Century Artists in Communities
  • Theatre and Community: Engaging, Responsive and Inclusive
    Transforming Through Performing
  • And more

A detailed schedule and instructions for joining the live stream will be posted on the ITAC4 site by August 31.

All of these online sessions will be archived on the ITAC website.

Award-winning author and Professor Dr. Bettina L. Love has developed and launched a new online educational resource called GET FREE. A multimedia Hip Hop civics curriculum for youth and young adults, GET FREE introduces students to a national network of young community leaders, artists, and activists who advocate for social change and democratic inclusion driven by grassroots organizing. In her own words, “GET FREE is inspired by the exuberance, ingenuity, political energy, resistance, love, and DIY model of underground Hip Hop [and aims to] push and extend ideas of democracy, citizenship, freedom, community, civic engagement, and intersectional justice.”

Dr. Love presented GET FREE to Boston Public Schools educators and teaching artists this fall as a resource to foster cultural competency and to develop a more diverse, inclusive, and relevant curriculum to engage students of color.

GET FREE covers resources that span music, poetry (including curated poetry by queer youth of color), literature, and art disciplines and includes interviews with local activists in select cities along with reflection questions. Articles and syllabus readers are also featured as are resources for mental health and self-care in the face of tragedy.

As an Associate Professor of Educational Theory & Practice at the University of Georgia, Dr. Love’s research focuses on the ways in which urban youth negotiate Hip Hop music and culture to form social, cultural, and political identities to create new and sustaining ways of thinking about urban education and intersectional social justice. Her research also focuses on how teachers and schools working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and anti-sexist educational, equitable classrooms.