youTHink February 2020 – Progress & Milestones

february 2020

progress and milestones

As we embark in our first year of operation as the Cayton Children’s Museum, we are looking at how we can apply our learnings and insights to improve efforts across our entire operation.

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youTHink—the Museum’s long-running youth outreach initia-

tive—has been growing and evolving for nearly 30 years. The program was founded in 1992 shortly after the opening of the Zimmer Children’s Museum as a means of bringing museum programming to the youth community—particularly those with limited access to the arts. We knew the transformational power of the arts, and wanted to see how our values-based lens could improve outcomes for youth in some of the highest-need neighborhoods in Los Angeles. We began partnering with Title 1 schools to implement classroom programs that gave middle and high school-aged youth—a population not served within Museum walls—access to high-quality arts education, leadership training and opportunities for civic engagement.

Today, youTHink empowers more than 2,500 students annually to be active participants in shaping their communities, while giving them the self-confidence, resources and soft skills necessary for educational and lifelong success.

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reTHinking our strategy youTHink had continued to grow rather organically through school referrals, teachers and guidance counselors, working its module into classroom curriculas across Los Angeles.

In recent years however, the initiative was beginning to see some program drop-off. Rather than apply band-aid solutions, we decided to press pause and conduct a full program assessment.

In October, we hired a seasoned youth and arts educator, Leonardo Bravo, as Chief Program Officer to help us identify the challenges and build a roadmap for success.

While we found that some of the attrition was due to external factors beyond our control, our biggest learning was that too many program offerings had diluted the impact of the youThink experience. By 2018, we were offering in-school residencies, neighborhood programs, a student ambassador program, youth camps, a teens and government initiative, and college access programs across 40 of LA County’s highest-need schools. While the impact was not lost on us, we were missing the high-touch experience, thoughtful planning and sense of community that youTHink was founded on.

our challenge became clear: How do we centralize the program to deliver consistency and build trust with students while still reaching those who need the program most?

our solution: Identify the artistic theme that are working well, create a framework that can be replicated and build long-term partnerships for more efficiency and impact.

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Our Goals

THinking smarter In the fall of 2019, we embarked on the first phase of our restructure, concentrating on two core foundational models that we found to have the most potential: the student ambassadorship program and filmmaking. Both curriculas showed strong youth engagement while allowing us to build a more focused learning and mentorship experience for students.

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As we restructured youTHink, we looked to these three goals to guide program design: 1. Implement structure and consistent, core themes that allow students to really immerse themselves in various artistic disciplines.

2. Identify thoughtful facilitators that understand the barriers these student populations face to mitigate drop-off.

3. Create opportunities for students to apply what they are learning in the real world.

Student Ambassador Program The Student Ambassador Program was designed to foster creativity and create agency across schools where funding grossly limits opportunities for personal growth. Building off the foundation that existed, we partnered with Title 1 schools in East Los Angeles to organize a large cohort of 40 high school students for an immersive 9 month-long training that combined multiple creative disciplines with leadership development and mentorship opportunities. The program kicked off in October 2019 with a weekend-long retreat where the students explored identity and vulnerability while connecting with their peers.

Following the retreat, the real work began.

The program is broken into four core artistic modules: Storytelling, Photography, Urban Planning and Theatre. The cohort just finished the first module and is beginning to apply their learnings in the second module through creative exercises.

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CONTINUE READING

Module 1: Storytelling youTHink Student Ambassadors finished their first learning module, Storytelling, in the beginning of January. For seven weeks, students convened at Esteban Torres High School with facilitator and storyteller Christopher Rivas to find their perspective and learn how to shape their own stories, while building their confidence as public speakers.

Over the sessions, Christopher encouraged students to write about everything from the importance of their bare essentials, to giving and receiving attention, to who they are beyond the roles they serve. Students bonded by opening up about their insecurities, pressures and families. Ambassadors shared that they relied on each other’s vulnerability to tell their own stories, finding it therapeutic

Module 2: Photography In early February, the ambassadors began the second module, Photography, led by photographer Mario DeLopez. In the coming weeks, students will learn the basics of photography, composition and developing their narrative. They will learn to communicate with their subjects, overcome fears and use the skills they learned in module 1 to tell their stories through a new lens.

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Filmmaking Fellowship For the past several years, youTHink has hosted a “Filmmaking for Social Change� cohort in libraries, parks and other community locations as part of its Neighborhood Program series.

While we saw many positive outcomes, the program faced barriers to success that were beyond our control. During one cohort, we were forced to relocate convenings due to increased gang activity and the following academic year, a teacher strike in the LA Unified School District shut down schools, ultimately impacting attendance as a program that was held after-school.

During our program audit, one of our key takeaways was that filmmaking was a passion for students and teachers, but we needed to change the format.

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“We saw a significant difference in the students from when they first began the storytelling session to their final presentation. Students were now confident enough to look at their peers and talk about deeply personal issues like body dysmorphia, drug use and injustice in their everyday lives.”

– Shirley Ramirez, youTHink Program Coordinator

After testing filmmaking as an in-school artist residency, we started seeing more consistent attendance, higher completion rates and stronger engagement. This led to the launch of youTHink’s Filmmaking Fellowship: an intensive 12-week in-school filmmaking program that teaches a class of Title 1 school students basic filmmaking skills and techniques, and helps them craft their narrative as a way of expressing their perspectives on their lives and neighborhoods.

The program, which launches this month with support from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, is in partnership with a journalism class at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights. The fellowship will be led by Elizabeth Gray Barnes, a professional filmmaker with experience working in schools and underserved communities. At the completion of the 12 weeks, students will have the opportunity to showcase their edited film for family and friends as part of a short film festival.

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THinking ahead In the fall of 2020, youTHink will roll-out a revamped version of the Neighborhood Program: a series of in-school artist residencies at eight different schools that will follow the same curriculum and organize as a “Student Congress” in the end of the academic year. The program is intended to test and then scale the program while bridging gaps between communities that are different, but face similar challenges.

“youTHink has taught

me that you have a voice and that voice matters a lot.

You can do anything with your voice.”

- Christopher, 9th grader

The youTHink team will also work to establish long-term partnerships that provide deeper and more consistent learning experiences for middle and high school students to signal a true commitment and dedication to social change and community uplift.

We will be sharing updates regularly in 2020, and we encourage you to come see what youTHink is doing to empower youth to be agents for change. Thank you for making this important work possible.

Join our founder and Chief Program Officer on Tuesday, March 10 for the final week of the Student Ambassador Photography module, or on Tuesday, March 24 for the second session of the Urban Planning Module. Both take place from 4:30—6:30pm at Esteban Torres High School in East LA. To learn more or confirm your attendance, contact: Esther Netter at enetter@ caytonmuseum.org or Carly Harrill charrill@caytonmuseum.org

Reach out to schedule a youTHink site visit!

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