To download the full 2006 Program Evaluation, click here.
Executive Summary
New Urban Arts is a creative and inclusive arts community driven by the leadership of Providence public high school students and emerging artists. Our mission it to empower young people to develop a creative practice they can sustain throughout their lives. Founded in 1997, this year marks a pivotal point in New Urban Arts history, as we enter the tenth year of our nationally recognized arts mentoring program. This milestone year has been marked by significant growth and change, asking us to reflect on our past to find meaning in our future. The following story narrates a dialogue been an artist and a high school student at New Urban Arts and illustrates change in a way that roots us in the dialogue from our past. It was written by a student of ours in 2002 while in her third year at New Urban Arts and a senior in high school.
Characters:
P…a Providence High School Student
V…an artist mentor who is a student at RISD. Originally from Mexico and has a heavy Spanish Accent
Setting:
Place: The couch in New Urban Arts’ studio (stage right). New Urban Arts
is a non-profit out-of-school arts mentoring organization for
Providence high school students.
Time: 3:07pm on a rainy Monday afternoon
Act 1, scene: 1
Curtain opens
Vega enters stage left and sits down next to Priscilla on the couch
V: Have you ever done a self-portrait, P?
P: (scratching her head) Yes. I’ve done a hundred of them (They both laugh)
V: Yeah, I know what you mean
P: In every art class I’ve ever been in the teacher wants us to draw ourselves. They always say the same thing.
V: What do they say?
P: That it’s great to practice our drawing skills by drawing ourselves. And it’s something every artist does or should do. (P yawns and gets up to stretch) a few teachers I’ve had told us that a self-portrait doesn’t have to be a simple, drawing of ourselves.
V: What else can it be?
P: It can be how you feel about yourself; how you think others see you. I mean it can even be pieces of cloth sewn together.
(V takes out his homemade wallet from his back pocket as P sits back down).
V: it’s different for everyone. Ask yourself what is identity? What is self? (Pause) Out of all the self-portraits which one was your favorite?
P: My favorite self-portrait wasn’t even done in a class. Last summer’s theme at New Urban Arts was identity and self-representation. The project was to create a piece of artwork that represented us, but did not necessarily take the form of a picture of us.
V: What did you make?
P: (P laughs) I took a frying pan out of the dumpster and decided that would be my canvas. Then I cut up a bunch of photocopies of pictures from Ecuador, my family, and myself and glued the pieces on the inside of the pan—Like ingredients that make up me. (V nods his head and scratches his bare chin.) If I had to do that project again I think I would add more pictures or change it completely.
V: That makes sense because your understanding of art is changing. Art reflects change and growth. You might learn even more about that in art school.
P: Hey V, I’ve never made a print, can we maybe do some block printing today?
V: Sure, I’ve never done that either.
(V and P get up at the same time; exit stage left)
Curtain Close
The End
This student wrote this story only months before she was accepted on full scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design. In the spring of 2007, she graduated from RISD with a BFA in textiles and has also served as New Urban Arts Administrative Assistant through her college years.
The way she reflects on her process with her mentor provides us with a glimpse into the impact our programs are making in the lives of young people every day. Together, the student and her mentor take creative risks, exploring who they are and who they might become. Supporting this student to reflect and develop her leadership and voice through making art enables her to think creatively throughout her life. At New Urban Arts, we believe that every young person is entitled to an active imagination and to create a future full of possibility. This is one of the many stories that demonstrate the impact of New Urban Arts’ model of developing a life-long creative practice through building sustained mentoring relationships in a self-directed, youth centered learning community. For the past ten years, New Urban Arts has served as a safe haven for the youth of Providence, inspiring over a 1300 high school students to envision themselves as creators and community leaders.
This report documents what we have learned about our impact, along with our plans for strengthening our programs next year. It focuses on the evaluation of our Youth Mentorship Program during the 2006-07 academic year, along with public events and exhibitions. We measure impact qualitatively and quantitatively. We have always worked to make our programs more effective and be able to communicate the quality of our work through reflective data. Our hope is that every young person experiences a positive and significant transformation through their involvement at New Urban Arts. The reflective nature of our work engages further dialogue and vision for our future.
This year, New Urban Arts partnered over 100 high school students with 16 artist mentors, ages 17-40. Artists volunteered over 2,000 hours to mentor our students in the visual and literary arts, building powerful mentoring relationships. These relationships are reciprocal in nature, blurring the lines between “teacher” and “student” as both act as learners and leaders at the New Urban Arts studio.
For a closer look at the impact of the artist mentor/student relationship, visit newurbanarts.org. Last year, we reported the launching of an online photo and video blog to document, archive, and present our programs more effectively. This year we have continued to utilize free and accessible web-based software including podcasting, with more than 10 videos on YouTube, regularly updated photo documentation of daily life in the studio on Flickr, and conversations with inspiring colleagues like Greg Kelly from The Bridge in Charlottesville, VA on Blogger.
One way in which New Urban Arts assessed its impact this past year was through a year-end survey. With a 46% sampling of program participants who completed the survey, we learned that:
The diversity of our student body is consistent with past years: more than 70% of our students qualify for free/reduce priced lunch which indicates that their families live below the poverty line; all Providence High Schools are represented in our studio, although the majority of students attend Central, Classical and Textron Chambers Academy, which are all located within a block of our multidisciplinary arts studio; 71% of our students are female while nearly 25% of our students identify as LGBTQQ; and due to our strategic location in a 3-block radius of three major high schools and on a direct bus line in the West End neighborhood, 44% of our students live in the surrounding neighborhoods of South Providence and the West End.
Through measuring participation, we learned that this year nearly 50% of students attended the studio at least 1 day a week. There was an average of 85 students in the studio each month, with little variance throughout the year. Student attendance rates doubled from the previous year in 2005-06. 55% of students from the previous year returned to participate in our programs this year. This student retention rate is much higher than in previous years.
We spent the year focusing on recruitment and engagement of our students, along with developing new opportunities for young people during the critical summer months out of school, aware that students often lose momentum and face serious challenges during the summer. New Urban Arts launched the Summer Art Inquiry; a thematic arts program that partners high school students, artists and scholars to collaboratively and creatively investigate a chosen theme over five weeks. Themes selected raise questions around the human experience as it intersects with creative practice.
Through our partnership with College Visions, a college preparatory program for Providence public high school students, this year New Urban Arts supported its largest senior class to date, many of whom are first in their family to attend college. 100% of seniors who participated in this intensive program are now attending four-year colleges including Holy Cross, Manhattenville, Mount Holyoke, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island School of Design, among others.
Based on the analysis of the data that we have collected this year, which follows in this report, we have identified goals for the upcoming year to improve our programs.
First, we strive to more effectively engage new students and young males. Although we have a high number of new students applying to our programs, first year students participate at the lower levels of attendance in comparison to the average student body. Also, while our studio community is diverse in many ways including art media students are interested in, the experience or skill level students have with the arts, ethnicity and family background, school affiliation, neighborhoods of residence, etc, females represent 71% of the student body. This should not be surprising since the majority of artist mentors have been historically female. To further impact student participation, New Urban Arts will work to reduce barriers to participation such as transportation and poor grades are identified by students in the year-end survey. The strategies we have outlined for better engaging new students and male students are explained at the end of this evaluation.
New Urban Arts also identified our Arts Mentoring Professional Development Program as a focused need for developing programmatic structure to better support our artist mentors. In the upcoming year, we will launch the Arts Mentoring Fellowship Program which hires two experienced community artists each year to providence individualized coaching and support to artist mentors on their path as learners and teachers, developing their own sustainable creative practice.
As we move ahead, we look forward to building stronger relationships with our alumni so that we can gather more information about the long term impact of New Urban Arts’ programs, provide a network that benefits alumni, and receive the support we need to operate our programs from those who directly benefited from them. This year, alumni artist mentors gave back to New Urban Arts in exciting new ways. For example, an anonymous artist mentor made a $25,000 contribution to New Urban Arts with funds raised at her wedding in lieu of giving gifts. We have developed an online alumni community to foster this growing network. We also look to institutionalize youth leadership and reconnect alumni to our studio through new opportunities with the development of a youth governance council.
In 2007, we were impacted by the stepping down of our Founder and Executive Director, the celebration of our 10th year, and the completion of a new improved darkroom and silkscreen studio.
This year’s studio renovation dramatically increased our capacity to serve two art mediums in high demand, screen printing and traditional black and white photography.
New Urban Arts built a new darkroom and silkscreen studio in May and June with the generous support of the Champlin Foundation. The studio renovation process included four months of conversations with artist mentors and students on how to best use the space, architectural drawings created by a volunteer, and construction with students, mentors, staff, board members and volunteers chipping in to drywall, spackle, and create usable spaces. The new darkroom was completed and ready for students for the summer 2007 programs.
This past year our gallery turn out was at its peak with 400 people joining the celebration of our 10th year anniversary “ART PARTY.” A marching band, cake, and our annual fashion show brought people out in the rain to celebrate a lifelong creative practice. This event was the largest it has ever been, which has staff thinking about how to accommodate events like this in the future.
Our Founder, Tyler Denmead, off to a Masters Program at University of Cambridge, England studying Art, Culture and Education left Providence with a legacy that will live on in the lives of young people, emerging artists, and the people of our city. With a keen insight at the early age of 20, he saw a need for innovative arts education in a city that values the arts but not arts education in schools. New Urban Arts will continue to be an innovator in the field and support the development of people’s creative practice in years to come.
As V reflects in his talk with P, “Art reflects change and growth.” New Urban Arts strives to do quality work that makes a definitive impact on young people, emerging artists and the city in which we live. This report provides readers with data that has been extensively collected throughout the program year to provide an in-depth look into how our programs work, through measurable and reflective data. As a learning organization, New Urban Arts uses the report as an internal document critical for continual growth and learning which strengthens our ability to adapt and respond to change.
In sharing this report, we invite you to provide your feedback and share ideas to help us strengthen our programs. If you have any further questions or ideas, please direct them to info@newurbanarts.org. And please visit www.newurbanarts.org to learn more about our current work. Thank you.
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