Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

Our mission is to ally with high priority communities and empower marginalized children and youth by engaging them in hands-on, community and school based arts education programs that respect existing cultural and community activity, resulting in participatory action and social awareness.

AFCY engages young people living in priority neighbourhoods in high quality and accessible arts programming that is meaningful, relevant and collaboratively developed with community and education partners. Engaging in the arts can help young people develop new ways of seeing, doing, and learning, while at the same time building new connections to community and self. Through the arts, youth can develop self-confidence, a can-do attitude and leadership qualities in their relationships with others. AFCY positions arts programs in schools and neighbourhood venues as a means to build community, and empower marginalized children and youth as decision makers who can realize their full potential as social contributors.

AFCY fully recognizes the importance and involvement of young people as program supporters and designers. AFCY programs are always free for children and youth participants, and provided at a highly subsidized rates to school partners, and free to community partners.

History of Organization

Our Outreach programs, begun in 2002, are offered at no cost to the young people and are structured as after-school programs or school-based workshops. Established in 1995, AFCY originally functioned as an arts scholarship provider to ensure that any child, regardless of means, could experience the benefits of arts experiences through a scholarship that allowed them to attend arts programs. Our strategic move to shift away from awarding scholarships and concentrate on outreach programming stems from our belief that we would reach more children and provide more accessible program opportunities. In October 2008 we changed our name from Arts for Children of Toronto (AFC) to Arts for Children and Youth (AFCY).

Over the past 5 years, our work has been focused in nine priority neighbourhoods and surrounding areas in Toronto, including Jamestown, Lawrence Heights, Malvern, Weston Mount Dennis, Jane/Finch, Regent Park, Toronto Central, Warden Woods and Victoria Village. In these communities, AFCY has worked steadily to position the artistic contributions of marginalized young people as an effective and meaningful way of increasing their chances of educational and personal success, increasing well being, and building a sense of community and social awareness.

Accolades and Accomplishments

In recognition of AFCY’s work in arts education we have been honoured with the following awards: 1. Founder and past AFCY Executive Director, Lola Rasminsky was the recipient of: a) the 2009 Local Heroes Award through the Canadian Urban Institute; and b) the Order of Canada in 2007 for her work in arts education. 2. AFCY Executive & Artistic Director, Julie Frost was presented with: a) the 2008 Vital People Award by the Toronto Community Foundation; and b) a scholarship for a leadership-training program at the Richard Ivey School of Business in 2008. 3. In 2007 AFCY won the highly competitive Toronto Mayor’s Arts for Youth Award.

Programs

>Youth X Press: TTC Murals
>AFCY’s Multigenerational Art-Making Program: Meals on Wheels
>AFCY’s Community Sharing Program

Currently, Arts for Children and Youth engages 7,000 children and youth per year in outreach arts programs that are delivered in more than 64 schools and 33 community sites in nine of Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods. AFCY programs operate from a pedagogical framework that engages participants in both formal and informal arts educational learnings. Through accessible community and school based arts engagement, children and youth can self-express, develop skills, learn new ways of seeing and doing, and establish new connections with society and with the self. AFCY’s programs rest on the choices made by marginalized children, youth and their communities. We believe that the choices made within our programming framework and under the guidance of masterful artist/instructors have the capacity to position marginalized youth as leaders. It is empowering for youth to see their choices and creativity validated and realized in a public mural or a dance routine that they created within their own neighbourhood. It is here that their cultural heritage, and their beliefs and ideas can be given form, and where youth can gain the vocabulary, self-confidence and purpose to advocate for their community and for themselves. Our school and community programs are linked. AFCY community-based venues include shelters, Toronto Public Housing, community centres, hospitals, detention centres, shopping malls. AFCY’s work directly addresses issues in Toronto’s identified issue areas as outlined in the Toronto Community Foundation’s Vital Signs 2009 Report. The most direct connection is the issue of Learning and evidence that economic disadvantage puts Toronto’s young learners at risk. As stated in the 2009 Vital Signs Report: “The 2008 Toronto District School Board Parent Census indicates that half of all students in the JK-Grade 6 population are from lower income families.

Youth X Press: TTC Murals

An innovative community focused mural making program that engages youth in Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods. Youth X Press aims to generate a “voice” for marginalized youth by installing original murals on TTC bus sides. The ad panels (normally discarded after use) are repurposed as surfaces for art. This program positions youth art-making as a means of building community capacity, using the transit system as a medium. The resulting murals travel on buses in Toronto neighbourhoods throughout the year. The power of this program lies in the youth. Their ideas and creativity are embraced. Their decisions regarding artistic direction, such as visual messaging and design are intrinsic to the program’s integrity and success. For many youth, their creative potential lies undiscovered until a meaningful opportunity provides them with chances to express their potential. One of the project’s objectives is to counter stereotypes using art as a catalyst. The program is based on youth engagement, youth employment (in community venues), partnerships, community development/investment and eco art-making.

Funding and Program Partners

This program has been sponsored by the Main Family Fund-Toronto Community Foundation, TD Bank Financial Group, Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. This program is delivered in partnership with the TTC and CBS Media.

Program Impact

Since 2008, the Youth X Press program has engaged 179 youth in Warden Woods, Weston-Mt. Dennis, Victoria Village, Jamestown and Regent Park, 24 of whom received employment opportunities. 25 original murals, each expressing a social message are currently mounted on TTC buses. The program provides youth with a means by which they can describe and make physical their ideas and lived experiences, and then share them with the wider community. Another program strength involves its environmental impact. Once removed from the buses, the murals are donated to social agencies chosen by the youth.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Leadership, civic engagement and belonging: “Most Torontonians feel they belong to their local community, but discrimination erodes a sense of identification with Canada… A recent study points to much lower levels of feelings of belonging among Canadian-born minorities… The greater the discrimination faced, the more someone was likely not to identify themselves as Canadian.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

AFCY’s Youth X Press program is about transformative learning that generates feelings of pride, empowerment and contribution, and a chance for youth to develop a sense of self and community. This way of learning can forge within young people a feeling of belonging and an awareness of their position as social contributors.

Participant Vignette

AFCY completed a Youth X Press program with a group of youth who were enrolled at George Brown College’s Redirection through Education Program (RTEP). The program engages and supports populations with mental illness. Two of the youth involved were very interested in the arts. They attended every one of the 10 Youth X Press workshops in order to be part of a project that they said made a difference in their lives. They were committed to creating murals that showed imagery that challenged the stereotypes they faced in their daily lives. One of the artists was an aspiring visual artist, who, as a requirement of the RTEP, had to secure an internship in order to graduate. Over the course of his involvement in Youth X Press he continued to excel and at the end of the program he began his internship with AFCY. He was placed in our programs across the city and through his 6-week involvement learned new skills such as African Drumming and painting techniques, as well as interpersonal and life skills, commitment and punctuality. He was able to fulfill all the requirements of his internship and graduated. What is remarkable is that he had tried other internships, but was unable to complete them. Through his experience and the support provided by AFCY this program allowed him to discover himself in new ways, to integrate with society, and to interact with the public about issues that are important to him.

AFCY’s Multigenerational Art-Making Program: Meals on Wheels

This program bridges the gap between seniors and youth in the community using meaningful hands-on collaborative art-making experiences. In this program young participants work with elders in their community to create art pieces that they donate for the Meals on Wheels program. The seniors who receive the art with their delivered meals are also invited to draw their own creative voice into the works to complete them. The program can be timed to coincide with holiday giving, and/or expanded to include seniors in a local Congregate Dining program, followed by a shared exhibition. This program places a priority on life-long learning, giving participants a broader perspective on learning opportunities in both formal and informal settings. In Toronto, where education and prosperity are closely linked, this program encourages participants to realize the relationship between success and education. It has also proven to be an effective way to keep kids interested in learning.

Funding and Program Partners

This program has been funded by an Anonymous Foundation, the Julie Jiggs Foundation and the Ontario Trillium Foundation, This program is delivered in partnership with the Meals on Wheels Programs at St. Christopher’s House and Scarborough Support Services.

Program Impact

Since 2003, the AFCY has worked with more than 900 youth on multigenerational Art-Making Programs, in priority communities across Toronto, in which art making acted as a catalyst and provided a common ground where the youth were able to relate and make meaningful creative connections with participating seniors.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Learning: Every aspect of education is challenged by dramatic demographic shifts, increasingly diverse student populations and, the demand for innovative and creative learners. Whereas “41% of children regularly participate in extracurricular arts programs; more than one-third (36%) never have that opportunity.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009) AFCY’s Multigenerational Art-Making Program bridges the gap between seniors and youth in the community using meaningful hands-on collaborative art-making to realize the relationship between success and education and to keep kids interested in learning.

Participant Vignette

During one of the Meals on Wheels Programs a youth participant declared that his AFCY experience was the highlight of his entire three-month placement with the YMCA Kickstart Program. This individual worked alongside 14 peers and approximately 20 seniors in collaborative art making. Drawing from these creative and face-to-face experiences with seniors, he decided that this was a career focus and a new direction for him. He then enrolled in the Humber College Senior Support Program. Another vignette includes one of the senior participants who was greatly inspired by the creative and social opportunities this program offered her. She is a poet who had not written for many years. This experience motivated her to write a poem to articulate her feelings and learnings from working with the youth in the program. At the opening, where the intergenerational artwork was publicly displayed, she read her poem in front of hundreds of people including her peers, the press and community workers. This was the first time in 86 years that her work had been publicly validated and celebrated. These anecdotes exemplify the importance of intergenerational activity which leads all participants to new understandings and to generate new paradigms. The new perspectives are used to break down barriers and foster mutual respect.

AFCY’s Community Sharing Program

AFCY’s Community Sharing Program demonstrates how arts education can be used as a vehicle of social awareness and social change, to encourage youth leadership and communal sensitivity. Community Sharing Programs are designed so that the participants make art that is given back to their community. For example young artists engaged in mural making create an additional artwork that is donated to a local social agency of their choice.. Here, youth are engaged as decision makers and social and communal contributors. The program encourages them to be considerate of other marginalized residents in their area, providing an increased sensitivity towards others in need. The aim is to increase awareness in order to minimize the fear, resentment and division that can often lead to social problems like health disparities and crime. Shaping programs as such fosters opportunities where youth can not only builds skills, and confidence, they can also begin to reconnect with their learning and start to actualize success.

Program and Funding Partners

This program has been funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Great West Life, Canadian Heritage, Telus, RBC, Toronto Community Housing, City of Toronto, and an Anonymous Foundation. 42 community partners work with AFCY in partnership to conduct our Community Sharing Program.

Program Impact

In the last fiscal year AFCY engaged 8,000 young people in Community Sharing activities that include the following neighbourhoods: Malvern, Weston/Mount Dennis, Steeles/L’Amoreaux, Jane/Finch, Jamestown, Regent Park, Lawrence Heights, Victoria Village. AFCY operated 156 Community Sharing Programs in both school and community settings, which each resulted in an artwork or performance being shared.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

Gap Between Rich & Poor: “Toronto risks becoming a City of even fewer middle income neighbourhoods, as wealth and poverty become more clustered in three ‘cities.’” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009) AFCY’s Community Sharing Programs help young people living in Toronto’s priority areas become more aware of resources/agencies available to them. The program introduces young people in these high-risk areas to services, which are starting to make a difference in income ratios, child poverty and crime levels, as well as health and prosperity inequalities in these areas compared with median levels in other Toronto areas.

Participant Vignette

Our most successful Community Sharing Project to date was our first annual Big Bam Boom Youth Arts Festival. This initiative brought communities from across the GTA together at Harbourfront Centre to celebrate and share the participants learnings and talents. The aim of the project was to highlight the outcomes of many of our programs, to engender public awareness, to advocate the value of arts education, and to cast a new light on the abilities of youth. Most importantly, the festival provided the opportunity for the youth to transcend barriers and share their success with society. The smiles on the faces of the audience and participants made it clear that the Community Sharing Program had advanced the well-being of all concerned. As a result of these high profile experiences, the youth were able to re-imagine themselves and their social circumstances, and to engage in new dialogue with new audiences. One youth dub poetry performer, after a difficult rehearsal night, approached an AFCY staff member petrified with stage-fright minutes before she was to perform. She was encouraged to face her fear, and to understand that her experience was normal, and this was what this program was all about, to challenge her and provide her with opportunities to overcome her personal barriers. On stage she appeared confident and embraced the opportunity, and in her own words she “nailed it”. After this experience, she saw and understood her own potential. Today she is an active member of AFCY’s Youth Advisory Council.