Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2008, $178,870)
The Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) Youth Arts Project is a two-year program that seeks to engage youth attending six elementary and middle schools in Williamsburg, Bushwick and Red Hook in school programs of visual or performing arts classes led by professional teaching artists lasting 17-19 weeks each. BAC will also provide classroom teachers with professional development training and offer each school a school-based performance assembly program. The project aims to instill skills and attitudes that will help foster positive youth development academically and socially and prevent juvenile delinquency amongst our youth participants as they proceed through New York's educational system. This two-year project is designed to serve between 500 and 750 potentially at-risk elementary and middle school students residing in Brooklyn within the boundaries of Community Board Districts 1 (Williamsburg), 4 (Bushwick), and 6 (Red Hook). BAC proposes to address the risk factors leading to juvenile delinquency by establishing creative arts programs in one middle and five elementary schools to support the strengths that these young people have in abundance but do not always recognize. The Youth Arts Project intends to help participating youth build confidence, self esteem and positive means of self-expression, to help them resist negative influences and adopt empowering life skills. BAC will also provide professional development training to classroom teachers involved in the Project, and will design projects and programs to involve school parents and/or the extended student body.
Brooklyn Arts Council will hire an evaluator of arts education programs in New York City, to oversee the evaluation process. The evaluator will create and administer pre- and post-Project evaluations measuring the impact of the Project and its alignment with stated objectives, as well as conducting interviews with classroom teachers and teaching artists. The results will be tabulated and analyzed to assess student growth in arts related competencies. Data analysis will be reported as required by the OJJDP. NCA/NCF