The Arts Empowerment Project Offers Hope and Opportunity to Area Youth By Angela Lindsay
T
he arts teach more than just how to glue pieces of construction paper together or how to color between the lines. Research shows that exposure to the arts can help young people develop many positive skills, such as persistence, collaboration, creative thinking, problem solving and motivation, that are valued by leaders and employers. In addition, the arts can improve a teenager’s confidence and academic performance, according to Middle Earth, a nonprofit community-based agency. In Charlotte, an initiative called The Arts Empowerment Project (TAEP) provides high-quality arts programming to help children who have been impacted by violence or trauma find their voices, learn social and emotional skills, and heal through art. “We’re not just trying to guide kids into arts careers. It’s really social capital and using arts as a vehicle to other opportunities. … It’s really opening doors for kids so they can have a view to a bigger world,” said TAEP founder and CEO Natalie Frazier Allen. A lawyer by trade, Allen’s legal experience working with people dealing with generational intra-family violence and foster care kids eventually informed her decision to create TEAP. Founded in 2011, TEAP gives K-12 youth who have suffered trauma and adverse childhood experiences a pathway to help them remain resilient by providing them an outlet to express themselves and improving social-emotional development and life skills like management, selfawareness, responsibility, relationship skills and alternative dispute resolution. “We will help children with building the skills they’ll need to navigate and process the challenges of violence and trauma, including school and community violence, engagement with law enforcement and domestic violence,” Allen said.
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The Arts Emplowerment Project students work on their drawings.
While underserved youth may be more vulnerable, TEAP is not just available to them. Allen said children and youth from other backgrounds who may benefit from the program can be referred to TEAP also, as witnessing violence and trauma has become so prevalent across society and all communities. “Having these issues undermine our sense of safety, stability and bonding and this can lead to mental health problems, instability in the future, physical health problems, adoption of at-risk behaviors and sometimes even early death,” she explained. As the child of a father who worked in dye-transfer printing and photo retouching, and a mother who was a choral music instructor, Allen said “art
framed (her) world,” so she was an aspiring visual artist, before becoming a lawyer. Many students today, however, may lack access to arts classes which are increasingly removed from school curriculum due to lack of funding and resources. According to Forbes.com, the arts face being squeezed out of schools because of the narrow focus on core subjects like English, math and science. “An organization like The Arts Empowerment Project is vital for Charlotte because it connects children of all ages from underserved populations with the arts,” said Allen. “It also explores social, emotional and language aspects through self-expression and imagination to build confidence and gain new life skills.”