Impactful Creative Youth Development

 
The Ensemble seeks to connect and inform all people who are committed to ensemble music education for youth empowerment and social change.
 
The Ensemble Newsletter

Regions

Africa

Asia/Oceania

Europe

Latin America

North America

Topics

Teaching & Learning

Program Design

Student Voice & Leadership

Community Building

Collaborations

Funding & Support

Perspectives & Collective Action

News & Resources

Impactful Creative Youth Development

Dalouge Smith, CEO, The Lewis Prize for Music

02-07-2024

During my 20-plus years of being an arts advocate and leader of music for social change work, I have repeatedly returned to this question: “How can we best convey the scope and complexity of our field’s impactful work to funders and policymakers?” 

I’m confident this is a question many Ensemble readers also ask. Communicating the many benefits for young people, families, and communities that result from our work is more complex than a sound bite.

In 2014, I participated alongside 150 other practitioners, advocates, researchers, and policymakers seeking to answer the above question and to build momentum for the U.S. field of community-based youth arts organizations. An essential outcome of this gathering was the coining of a new term, “Creative Youth Development” (“CYD”) to describe the blending of positive youth development principles with artistic training that prioritizes youth leadership, equity, collective action, and community representation. 

If you’re a reader of The Ensemble, you are almost certainly engaged in CYD, in some way—although you may not know that term.  Creating a term doesn’t immediately result in its adoption or a broad understanding of its meaning. 

When I became CEO of The Lewis Prize for Music (TLPM), a U.S.-focused funding organization, my team and I knew that Creative Youth Development music organizations and leaders across the U.S. are dedicated to achieving equitable systems change (See TLPM’s Systems Change Definition) through their CYD work. We also knew that CYD was not a term that all were familiar with or used to describe their work.

We didn’t want to define the field based on the diverse and challenging settings where it takes place, such as disinvested communities and schools or child welfare, carceral systems, and youth mental health systems. We wanted to emphasize CYD programs’ commitment to energizing young people, their artistry, and their aspirations to lead change that prioritizes personal and community wellbeing.  However, naming the similarities and the nuances of this work was not within our capacity then, because national CYD field data collection and analysis was modest at the time.

Since then, we’ve completed five years of award cycles. We’ve received and reviewed hundreds of applications, learning in depth about our applicants and our awardees. As we did so, we understood that we were filling knowledge gaps for ourselves and the field. As a result, we’ve been committed to sharing the insights we accumulate about CYD, and we have been doing  so through reports and videos that help define the field. We have accumulated substantial experience and knowledge that illuminates the clear consistencies in programs across the country, even as each one is uniquely rooted in local histories and cultures.  

For example, we’ve been able to refine our recognition of the main characteristics of CYD systems change work. These include:

  • culturally responsive programming. 
  • pursuit of racial and intersectional equity. 
  • centering of youth voice and leadership. 
  • accountability to the community.
  • reciprocal partnerships.
  • having a Big Idea!

It’s important to note that woven throughout these characteristics is the necessity for healthy relationships and continuous learning.

As we’ve deepened our relationships with the recipients of our $500,000 Accelerator Awards, we’ve developed further insights into the CYD field’s alignment with other youth-oriented sectors. Knowing that CYD organizations base their work on the needs and desires of the young people they serve, we’ve explored this question: What are their priorities for cross-sector work in systems change and direct services to the youth in their programs?

Across both of those spheres—systems change and direct services—the following priorities consistently arise: 

  • youth employment and career pathways 
  • social connection and mental health 
  • youth organizing and movement-building 
  • community development and creative placemaking 
  • cultural continuity, preservation, and restoration

We’ve now completed our five-year commitment to award-making, having received 675 unique organizations’ award applications from programs in 46 U.S. states and four territories.  This process has made it abundantly clear to us that work guided by these priorities isn’t confined to our awardees; it’s occurring across the U.S. and throughout the world.

Though The Lewis Prize for Music will not open an awards cycle in 2024, we’re devoting the year to collaboratively translating CYD practices into knowledge the entire field can use. We’re excited to be doing this in partnership with The Ensemble.

The Ensemble has been an important resource for helping us all understand our field and how our specific work moves alongside the work of others. It is a platform for young musicians, teaching artists, program leaders, and researchers to tell their stories and share their learning, so that we can see the parallels that exist across cultures, geographies, and musical idioms. We’re excited to bring our two paths of inquiry together this year to explore the field’s international intersections with systems change.

We’ll also be making the case within the funding community for the unique power of CYD to benefit young people and communities; we believe that the field needs and warrants much wider support.  Since the term “Creative Youth Development” was coined, this field’s wealth of talent, drive, and community solidarity has grown even greater. What has not grown as rapidly is the availability of transformative financial investment. The impact achieved by our Accelerator Awardees convinces us that many more CYD organizations can achieve the same with similar investments—ideally, through a CYD pooled fund.

We appreciate all of you, the readers of The Ensemble, who will take this journey with us, so that, together, we can celebrate the stories and grow the power of young people leading change through music!

Accelerator Awards, Creative Youth Development, Editorial, February 2024, The Lewis Prize for Music

Related Content

Share

ABOUT US MASTHEAD THE AMBASSADORS THE ARCHIVES SUBSCRIBE CONTACT
© Copyright 2022 Ensemble News