Quarterly Progress Report: Summer 2020

SUMMER 2020

Progress and Milestones

With our Museum doors closed, the team at ShareWell is filled with nostalgia.

We miss the sounds of children climbing to new heights in the Courage Climber and the looks of curiosity when littles discover what they are capable of. We look back on the past year as our youTHink Student Ambassadors and aspiring filmmakers learned how the creative arts can be powerful mechanisms for social change, many even continuing after schools closed. There has been no shortage of moments and firsts in our inaugural year as the Cayton Children’s Museum and our 30th year operating youTHink. And we know there will be plenty more on the other side of the pandemic.

But it has not stopped us from making some incredible progress toward our goals.

(READ ON)

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Since the start of the pandemic, we have developed a three-year strategic plan, launched a virtual museum program, defined our purpose, mission and core values, built a COVID-19 museum response plan, and started creating a robust marketing strategy to prepare for our reopening and beyond.

It's all here and more in ShareWell's Quarterly Progress Report: Summer 2020.

As you will see, the air of uncertainty has encouraged our team to explore new ways that we can connect with our museum community—with a focus on reaching children and youth living in parts of LA that have been hit hardest by the pandemic. This time has re-energized our creativity and given us the space to be strategic so we can provide the healing, connection and community Los Angeles families will need as we journey toward a new normal.

We want to thank you for standing behind our work during these challenging times.

As funders shift their focus to economic aid and public health, the future of arts and cultural institutions is at risk. In fact, The American Alliance of Museums estimates that as many as 30% of museums will not survive the pandemic.

The value of creativity and play—both spiritually and economically— cannot be overlooked in this crisis. If we, as a community, fail to recognize the importance of organizations like ShareWell today, our children will lose a fundamental part of their childhood and our community, a source of economic recovery, tomorrow.

Your generosity and continued support not only fuel the work you will hear about in this report, but it also sends a message that institutions like the Cayton Children’s Museum and programs like youTHink are key to the health, livelihood and well-being of our society.

Please join us.

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If we, as a community, fail to recognize the importance of organizations like ShareWell today, our children will lose a fundamental part of their childhood and our community, a source of economic recovery, tomorrow.

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The Cayton launches virtual programming to bring values-based learning to children and families during the pandemic

THE AMAZING ANDRES

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Cayton Recess

When our Museum doors closed on March 12, we wasted no time bringing the Cayton to children and families—virtually . In late March, we launched “Cayton Recess,” a pro-gram designed to spark creativity and to continue nurturing responsible members of community while we work together to keep our community healthy and safe. Each week, parents can tune in on social media to join “The Amazing Andres” and “The Marvelous Marissa,” among other beloved Cayton personalities, for story time, sing-alongs, dance and movement, artmaking and reflection through our lens of social responsibility. Video content is curated each week to explore a new universal value that we all share as humans.

THE MARVELOUS MARISSA

Together with our virtual community, we have explored the meaning of respect, collaboration, courage, honesty, acceptance, character and more to connect children to the ideals and values that bind all of humankind.

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CHRISTINE SUN KIM

As part of Cayton Recess, we also reenvisioned a free public program at the Museum for virtual learning. The program, now called “The Artivists,” introduces young people to emerging artists that are using their work to ignite social change.

NIKKOLAS SMITH

LAUREN HALSEY

Since its launch, we have highlighted artists like Christine Sun Kim, a sound artist and activist who promotes the power of listening despite being born deaf, and Lauren Halsey, a visual artist born and raised in South LA who uses her public artworks to explore themes of gentrification and the struggles of the Black community. The virtual program—launched in part with support from The City of Santa Monica Department of Cultural Affairs—will expand into a monthly artist-in-residency series at the Cayton, starting in the summer of 2021.

As our “recess” turns into a new normal, visitors can still check out program content each day on Instagram at @Caytonmuseum (click here), or view our entire library of videos on Youtube at Bit.ly/caytonrecess.

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cayton creators outdoor community program With our museum doors closed, the Cayton is venturing outdoors to use the creative arts as a tool for connection, community and hope

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CAYTON CREATORS: Outdoor Community Programming As we work toward modifying the museum space and making changes to our operations and protocols so we can safely welcome families in our space again soon, we have decided to take the Cayton on the road.

CAYTON CREATORS Outdoor Community Programming is a “mobile museum� experience that brings our signature approach to the creative arts into communities during the pandemic. All programming is free-of-charge for the general public. The program is intended to emphasize the importance of arts and culture in early childhood development while cultivating community and connection in an era of social distancing.

Weekly family programming will be piloted in partnership with Santa Monica Place on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. starting August 26. Programming will take place outdoors in front of the museum on Level 3. For more details, visit Caytonmuseum.org.

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CAYTON CREATORS:

Bringing Creative Expression into Low-Income Communities

The social and academic disruption of the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on children in low-income communities, only widening the achievement and attainment gap. Lack of consistency, limited access to Internet and technological resources, and a disconnect from caring teachers who act as role models for these children and youth, can lead to toxic stress that only further inhibits success.

At ShareWell, we believe that the arts are a gateway to opportunity and a better quality of life, which every child is entitled to. In fact, according to the California Arts Council, cities with greater public access to the arts have less poverty, more civic engagement and more social cohesion. Our goal is to reduce some of the barriers that stand in the way of creative engagement to build resiliency, boost academic performance and improve outcomes for lifelong success.

Therefore, we are working with other non-profits and communitybased organizations to bring CAYTON CREATORS into some of LA's highest need neighborhoods. Each pop-up will run roughly two hours, and encourage healing and coping through visual and performance arts and communal art-making.

With funding, we plan to partner with five to 10 different community partners to provide weekly family programming through 2020 and into 2021.

According to the California Arts Council, cities with greater public access to the arts have less poverty, more civic engagement and more social cohesion.

BECOME AN ADVOCATE FOR ARTS ACCESS Help us bring CAYTON CREATORS into communities most impacted by the pandemic.

A minimum annual donation of $1,000 makes you part of the "Advocates for Arts Access" Annual Giving Circle. Underwriting and sponsorship opportunities are also available.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE 6

AIR QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS We plan to add UV Lights to our HVAC system to help purify the air throughout the museum space for safer play and interactions.

HELP-A-COPTER

THE HELP-A-COPTER We are adding a strong plexiglass shield around the front of the Helpa-Copter's nose for added protection from the elements and adding an extra step to the onboarding process for the safe entrance and exit of our brave pilots!

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Museum Improvements & COVID-19 Response Efforts The Cayton begins preparations to adapt its space, exhibits and protocols for its reopening Like most children’s museums, the pandemic has forced us to reexamine our space and exhibits so we can safely reopen. Even as our community recovers, we know that parents will be more sensitive to their surroundings and potential exposures. This is a responsibility we take very seriously. In fact, we sought the expertise of health experts and exhibit fabricators to help us identify areas of concern and guide us toward solutions.

The following are some of the upgrades and improvements needed to safely welcome visitors again:

GLOW WITH US 7

COMMUNITY MARKET & CAFÉ Arguably the world’s most popular market, our Community Market & Café might also be the coziest. To create more air flow and room for littles to comfortably get everything on their grocery list, we plan to make some small upgrades to open up the space.

GLOW WITH US Glow With Us ignites all sensations by touch. As more hands make contact with the wall, the brighter and more intense the sensory experience becomes. With funding, we will give this exhibit a new façade that is not only easier to clean, but will also make it more interactive and fun for all ages.

DERFNER THEATER DOOR

MASTERPIECE MAKERS With the number of little hands on the magnets each day, it’s hard to provide the level of cleaning that will reduce the spread of germs. So we are envisioning turning it into a living art wall where artists can sketch, draw and create on a small screen while a robot replicates their masterpiece in real-time on the wall! This upgrade will eliminate the need for props for a more hygienic art experience all-around.

MASTERPIECE MAKERS

THE DERFNER THEATER We plan to add a theater door, as well as new flooring to designate more private space for small groups.

LOCKERS Code-protected lockers will be installed near the back restrooms for guests to store their personal items during their visit.

THE LOUNGE Visitors have long been requesting that we expand The Lounge to allow more personal space, and COVID-19 has only made the need greater. In addition to expanding the footprint, we also plan to upgrade the furniture for added comfort.

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THE LOUNGE

THE WELCOME LOBBY We will be expanding the W.M. Keck Foundation Welcome Desk for safer visitor and staff interactions in response to COVID-19. The desk will also be installed with sneeze guards to reduce the spread of germs.

HARMONY STEPS With funding, we hope to bring the Harmony Steps—a new interactive sound installation that is activated by step—to the Welcome Lobby of the Cayton. (Think the Walking Piano in the movie “Big” with Tom Hanks!)

Each chord will provide an opportunity for donor underwriting to support our recovery from the pandemic.

REFLECTIONS ART INSTALLATION This permanent art installation lives inside the museum entrance, reflecting on the donors that have helped shape our identity, our Humanitarians. Donors who pledge a commitment of $2,500 and more are recognized on a mosaic tile, which increases in brilliance with the size of the pledge.

WATER BOTTLE FILLING STATIONS We are replacing the water fountains with water bottle filling stations to further prevent the spread of germs while encouraging environmentally responsible choices.

HARMONY STEPS

BECOME A HUMANITARIAN These efforts are part of our added responsibility as a children's museum to protect the health and safety of our visitors—and they are only possible with funding. Become a Humanitarian today by making a pledge of $2,500 or more. Your investment in our future will be recognized on a mosaic tile in our new "Reflections" art installation inside the Cayton for generations to come.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

These are just some of the extra measures we are taking to improve our space and create a safer experience for all enter the Cayton.

Apart from these critical exhibit and space upgrades, our team is working on updating and expanding our health and safety protocols with guidance from public health experts and implementing new training procedures to inform cleaning, janitorial and maintenance.

REFLECTIONS ART INSTALLATION 9

youTHink goes virtual When COVID-19 shut down schools, youTHink adapted its programming model When schools moved to virtual instruction in mid-March, there was a lot of concern around youTHink—in particular, its participants. Many youth enrolled in youTHink programs face a great deal of hardship and economic adversity. We knew that when you disengage them from the school environment, you take away their safety net.

STUDENT AMBASSADOR PROGRAM: When schools announced closures, our Student Ambassador program was already in its third module out of four, and nearing seven months completion in the nine-month-long program. We had already made incredible progress and witnessed noticeable transformation in participants, so our goal was more to maintain engagement for future growth.

The last two modules—“Urban Planning & Design” with Monique Lopez of Pueblo Planning and “Theatre & Movement” with Naomi Ackerman of the ADVOT Project—were scheduled to take place at Mark Twain Library in LA Council District 8.

A combination of COVID-19 related factors led the Ambassadors to wrap early with plans to reconvene in Fall 2020.

However, participants were just coming off the exciting culmination of their second module, “Photography,” where they had the rare opportunity to exhibit their photographs at a local art gallery in Boyle Heights called Espacio 1839.

STUDENT AMBASSADOR ANNUAL RETREAT AT CAMP BOB WALDORF 2

The Ambassadors visited Self Help Graphics—a staple in the Boyle Heights community for the past 50 years—which specializes in printmaking that ignites activism for East LA residents. Students also took a trip to LA Plaza de Artes y Cultura in historic Olvera Street, a cultural organization that showcases the important contributions of Chicano and Latinx people in shaping Los Angeles.

FILMMAKING FELLOWSHIP While youTHink’s Student Ambassador program was nearing its final months, our 12-week-long Filmmaking Fellowship was just two weeks into the curriculum when COVID-19 hit. To succumb to the pandemic would have meant letting down a class full of students in one of the highest need parts of our community, East LA. When we learned that schools were closing, we acted quickly to identify an alternative method for program delivery, collectively deciding with the high school Journalism teacher, Brenda Casanova, and our facilitator and accomplished filmmaker, Elizabeth Gray Baynes, to transition to virtual instruction.

STUDENT AMBASSADORS LEARN ABOUT THE BASICS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THEIR SECOND MODULE

STUDENT AMBASSADOR FIELD TRIP TO LA PLAZA DE ARTES Y CULTURA

Over the next eight weeks, students learned how filmmaking can be a compelling medium to effect positive change within their communities. Casanova and Baynes delivered weekly instruction via Zoom, and classroom time was followed by one-to-one critiques and coaching sessions, with Baynes offering clearly outlined next steps via email to guide students in their script writing and editing process.

STUDENT AMBASSADOR FIELD TRIP TO SELF HELP GRAPHICS

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On May 27, 2020, students organized a Short Film Festival on Zoom, where they shared their final projects with fellow students, their families and their communities.

Their objective: document how the pandemic has affected their lives, neighborhoods and communities.

ShareWell also invited key stakeholders, donors and funders to see the films and participate in a virtual filmmaker Q&A. At the end of the semester, despite the heightened impact of COVID-19 on their community, more than 70% of students finished the class for a final grade.

BECOME A HARMONIZER Taking youTHink virtual requires significant resources to ensure the curriculum meet the needs of high-risk students.

When you pledge a "chord" at the $25,000 level in the "Harmony Steps" exhibit, you help give youth a safety net through the arts.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

Thank you to our funders for their support of youTHink and our community access programs:

YOUTHINK: 2020-2021 ACADEMIC YEAR

YOUTHINK: 2021 AND BEYOND

With LAUSD announcing that it will resume virtually this Fall to limit the spread of COVID-19, youTHink is following suit, using key learnings from the virtual Filmmaking Fellowship to guide program plans.

As we re-envision program content and strategies for virtual delivery, we plan to use the next six months to restructure youTHink based on key learnings from the first phase of our program evaluation, which we started in summer 2019. This includes:

Our team has been working closely with LAUSD and community leaders in the council districts with the most limited academic resources to develop plans, with our energy focused on creating engagement in the absence of in-person interaction. We are also exploring some in-person engagement designed around social distancing given barriers around technical resources.

For the first time, youTHink is also piloting a partnership with LAUSD’s Office of Career Technical Education (CTE) to integrate the program as the capstone project for graduating students in eight schools in the Arts Media Entertainment pathway.

Outside of the classroom, we are working with YMCA in Council Districts 8 and 15 to adapt our neighborhood and after-school programming to engage high-risk youth.

(HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION)

1. Build a responsive strategy for implementation when in-person gathering resumes.

2. Rebuild our partnership network to create new investment from teachers and schools.

3. Reduce the number of program offerings to strengthen student engagement and program completion rates.

4. Curate a selective group of program facilitators with proven success across arts modalities.

5. Ramp up our reach again when schools reopen.

Stay tuned for more updates on youTHink program plans for the 2020-21 academic year and beyond in the months ahead.

Louis L. Borick Foundation

Jennifer Simchowitz Jim Brooks Allen Family Foundation

The JIB Fund Larry Braun Lon V. Smith Foundation

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The Mark Hughes Foundation The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation

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Building Our Vision

Deloitte takes ShareWell on a journey to articulate our purpose, vision and values

As we started to dream big about the years ahead, we realized that we needed to take a step back and revisit the WHY: Why do we do this work and why is it important? The answer would act as our compass in planning, so everything we do feels authentic and meaningful.

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Strengthening Our Commitment To Equity, Diversity And Inclusion

To help us through this process, we enlisted the expertise of one of the world’s top problem solvers, Deloitte, who took us on pro bono.

Over the past three months, the Deloitte team challenged us to look deep into our work to understand our strengths, our value proposition, our motivation and the legacy we want to leave the world. In the end, it all boiled down to one idea: social justice.

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This is the ethos that will guide our work ahead—and it will take the work of many. In the coming months, we will invite more discussion and exploration around where our community comes in, so stay tuned for more.

Our deepest gratitude to our Board member, Susan Goldsmith, and her team at Deloitte US for donating their time and brilliance to take us on this journey.

Our role as an institution is to take what we do best—pair experiential learning and the creative arts—to guide children, youth and families to work together toward justice and expanded possibility in their communities and beyond.

ShareWell adopts its firstever policy and strategic plan toward fostering Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion—from the inside out.

This spring, we took this mission a step further. With generous support from the Los Angeles Department of Arts & Culture, we developed our first-ever “Cultural Equity & Inclusion Policy” and a five-year strategic plan toward ensuring this commitment is not only reflected in our arts programming and visitor experience, but also embedded within our organizational culture.

To ensure this commitment endures as a central guiding tenet for our institution, we are establishing a Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (JDEI) Task Force at both the staff and Board level, to carry out and carry on this important work. We are examining every aspect of our operations to see that our policies and practices truly align with our core values—that we "walk the walk"—and nurture a culture of inclusiveness across all aspects of our work.

We look forward to sharing our progress as we work toward these goals in the months ahead.

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BECOME A MAJOR SUPPORTER TODAY &

YOUR PLEDGE WILL BE MATCHED UP TO $250,000 THE HUMANITARIANS ANNUAL GIVING CIRCLE $2,500 and +

THE ADVOCATES FOR ARTS ACCESS

Join our giving circle by making an annual pledge of $1,000 or more and become a voice for equitable access to the arts. Members are recognized on our Annual Donor Wall and in marketing publications.

Become a Humanitarian with a pledge of $2,500 or more and be recognized as part of the permanent "Reflections" installation at the Cayton for years to come. Pledges of $10,000 or more are recognized for the lifetime of the museum and can be paid over multiple years.

THE HARMONIZERS

THE CREATIVE VISIONARIES

$25,000 and +

$75,000 and +

Pledge a chord in the new “Harmony Steps" installation and help create harmony in our community when it is needed most. Chords can be pledged at the $25,000 or $50,000 level.

Recognition is for the lifetime of the museum and can be paid over multiple years.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE OR CONTACT: Esther Netter - Chief Executive Officer esther@sharewell.org

Leave your legacy by underwriting an exhibit or community space at the Cayton. Creative Visionaries are recognized on Exhibit Wing signage, as well as in our Generosity Garden and Reflections installation for the lifetime of the museum.

Pledges can be made over 5 years.

Carly Harrill - Chief Advancement Officer carly@sharewell.org 5