Classacts

Project Youth ArtReach

Project Youth ArtReach (PYA), launched in 2000, promotes positive youth development by providing juvenile offenders in detention, corrections, and probation settings with arts programs taught by master artists to enhance youth's cognitive, linguistic, social, and civic development. As youth engage with a diverse group of professional artists, they acquire skills in visual, literary, and performing arts. By exploring themes of respect and values from other cultures, youth learn lessons in tolerance, problem solving, and conflict resolution.

"Class Acts Arts PYA programs are educational and inspiring, and teach our youth to be more open-minded and respectful of those who might not look like them or come from the same background, instead of being threatened by them. The artists provide important reminders of what makes us all human."
-Robert Green, Warden, Montgomery County Correctional Facility

Recent PYA highlights:

  • PYA Director Claire Schwadron's paper "From Ghana to Greece to Lakota Sioux Nation: Cultural Diversity in Arts in Corrections" is published online on the Community Arts Network, November 2009. Claire was also selected to present this paper at the National Community Arts Convening, April 19-21, 2009, in Monterey, CA.

  • More than 415 workshops and performances in FY09, reaching close to 2,600 youth as audience members or participants, including three residencies exclusively for Spanish-speaking youth.

  • Two artist trainings in 2009 with arts-in-corrections specialist and PYA consultant Grady Hillman. One training featured University of Maryland professor Dr. Peter Leone on the special needs of incarcerated youth. The other featured Sergeant Tate Safford, Gang Coordinator for the Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, on gang awareness issues.

  • 7 murals created within 4 correctional facilities and 2 murals with high-risk youth in mentoring programs (2008-2009).

  • Murals were installed in the Montgomery County Council's new conference room in Rockville, MD (created by Youthful Offenders at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility), at the student union at University of Maryland Baltimore County (created by Choice Program youth) and the Wheaton Ice Arena (created by youth from Identity, Inc.).

  • Poetry residencies with Bulgarian poet Lyubomir Nikolov and African-American poet and musician Bomani Armah (2008-2009).

  • Publication of a hand printed and bound poetry anthology with youth poems culled from the past 6 years of PYA (Dec. 2009).

  • Visual arts residencies in mask making, ceramics, book making, portrait painting, drawing, mural arts, and mixed media with teaching artists David Amoroso, Maria Anasazi, Adjoa Burrowes, David Cunningham, Arturo Ho, Peter Krsko, Carien Quiroga, Pamela Reid and Joey Tomassoni.

  • On-going, weekly drumming residency with Anansegromma of Ghana for young men at MCCF since Feb. 2009.

  • Storytelling workshops and performances with Israeli artist Noa Baum , African American storyteller Baba Jamal Koram, Jewish storyteller Gail Rosen, and Native American storyteller Dovie Thomason.

  • Exhibition of "Forms of Identity" at Delaplaine Art Center, Frederick, MD, Sept. 6-30, 2008, comprised of "self portraits" in the form of dresses and skirts by female participants in PYA programs.


PYA owes a huge thanks to our recent funders!

The Montgomery County Council; The Maryland State Arts Council; The Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County; The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation; The Family League of Baltimore City; The Choice Program of the Shriver Center at UMBC; The Corina Higginson Trust; The Starbucks Memorial Fund; The Maryland Department of Juvenile Services; The Montgomery County Correctional Facility's Inmate Council; and The Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission.