Empowering Youth Through Deeper Learning
The new year has brought with it many changes at Nature Consortium’s Youth Art Program!
Since our first class in 2000, we’ve striven to provide arts education as a vehicle for young people to realize their potential and empower themselves by learning about their environment and community. Our teachers are real-world artists who help youth develop the creative abilities needed to innovatively enact social change.
Youth + Arts Education x (Environment + Community) = Creative Leaders + Social Change
The formula has been a success thusfar, but we’re always looking for ways to improve.
Ms. Amaranta’s Eco Arts class at Rainier Vista
We asked ourselves: How can we find new ways to make our programming even more meaningful and impactful? To build on the great foundation we created, we decided to implement some significant changes that will strengthen the environmental-arts education of our students.
New Curriculum
Starting this past January, our artists began teaching a new and improved curriculum for our Gardening & Eco Arts classes. In class, the youth create art projects with an ecological focus while also learning to see and connect with nature in their own neighborhoods. We’ve given our youth the creative challenge of re-using available materials as much as possible.
At the Yesler garden, students participate in hands-on garden activities infused with scientific, nutritional, and environmental education. Growing and using their own produce, students also learn easy ways to cook delicious snacks that can also be made at home. This experiential learning helps our youth understand the importance of local and organic food, food life cycle, and nutritional benefits of fresh vegetables.
By the end of the quarter, students learn about their local ecology as well as native, invasive, and edible plants through the arts. We believe that when young people learn not only about their community but also how to take care of its natural components, they can be inspired to engage at a higher level.
Harvesting leafy greens in Ms. Amy’s Garden Arts class
New Class Model
The key to these changes has been a dramatic shift from a drop-in-any-time, first come, first served model to one that requires pre-registration and limited class sizes each quarter. Although the new model requires a significant adjustment for youth and parents, the smaller class size allows teaching artists provide more in-depth, sequential, skill-based education.
Despite the program changes, we still want to make sure that our students are able to have fun and experience all the great aspects of programming they’ve always loved.
This time around, we’ve gone from a gardening student dropping in for one class and planting one seed, to a student having the chance to go to over 12 classes in a row and watch how that one seed turns into a tasty organic fruit they can harvest and cook in class. In another class, the students can learn about the effect of greenhouse gases in our environment, and throughout the whole quarter, they can take that knowledge and design different art projects that cover this topic, helping them learn about it in multiple ways.
We’re excited to see how these changes will make a lasting impact on our youth, and we’ll keep you updated as the classes progress!
Support This Program
You can support arts and environmental education in Seattle by donating to Nature Consortium today.