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Art, often sidelined as a leisure activity, is an indispensible tool for social change. Just ask any of the dozens of YouthActionNet® Fellows around the world who are using the arts to increase awareness of human rights, breathe life into decaying neighborhoods, preserve indigenous cultures, inspire community pride, and heal those struggling with life threatening illnesses.
In short, art matters. And in most cases, it's the doing that counts more than the final product.
"It's not the art itself, but the process of being creative that has the power to connect and to focus our minds on who we are and what we want to achieve," says Cat Sweeney, founder of Jungle City MASSIVE, a community of creative people in Melbourne, Australia who see music, dance, and culture as powerful tools for social change. "Creating is the process of being in the moment, letting go of your ego, and freeing your mind to explore new territory," writes Cat her in YouthActionNet® blog.
Today's young social entrepreneurs demonstrate that art - and the creative process - is vital to addressing a litany of local and global challenges. In light of such challenges, stimulating people's creative imaginations may be more important now than ever before.
In an article entitled "The Creativity Crisis" (Newsweek, July 19, 2010), authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman cite falling creativity scores among U.S. schoolchildren. The authors attribute the decline to the increasing amount of 'screen time' (e.g., videogames, computers) children now experience and curriculum standards that downplay the importance of the arts. At the same time, the article points to a recent poll of 1,500 CEOs that identify creativity as the number one leadership competency of the future.
Judging from the number of youth social change initiatives that integrate creativity and the arts into their activities, today's young leaders understand the importance of sparking the imagination, while injecting a sense of play into their work.
Elena María Fernández Suárez, co-founder of the Association Ye too ponese (in English, "You, too, do something") in Spain views the arts as critical to stimulating civic engagement among the younger generation.
"We use different artistic mediums - drama, photography, video, writing, music, and street art - to stimulate debate, creativity, and the expression of opinions, all of which are important skills for developing an active and engaged citizenry,' she says. Targeting mostly children and adolescents, Ye too ponese uses art as a hook to deliver its educational programs. Writes Elena in her YouthActionNet® blog, "art allows us to break out of our normal perceptions and see new possibilities."
In Mexico, Nancy Amodo Soto, co-founder of Trascendiendo (in English, Transcending), uses art therapy to promote healing among cancer patients and their families. "For the individual, it can be difficult to focus on positive health outcomes after receiving a disheartening medical diagnosis," she writes. "We focus on creating new avenues for patient and family communication - spaces that unite body and mind through the imagination and the transformation of raw materials into art."
In Pakistan, Muhammad Shahzad utilizes the arts - theatre, photography, and film - to raise public awareness of human rights issues. Over the past four years, the Chanan Development Association (CDA), the organization Muhammad founded, has staged more than 1,000 performances that explore issues ranging from early forced marriage to gender violence.
Is the message getting through? "We're seeing a greater acceptance of young people's views and reduced violence against women," says Muhammad, adding that CDA has contributed to increased tolerance of other people's religious beliefs and the value of girls' education.
Other YouthActionNet® Fellows are using the arts to equip youth for the twenty-first century job market. In the U.S., Marisa Catalina Casey founded Starting Artists to provide opportunities for under-served students, ages 13 to 18, in Brooklyn, New York to launch arts-based micro-enterprises. Marisa recognized that underprivileged youth often find it difficult to compete for jobs in the new economy without opportunities to develop their creativity and entrepreneurial skills.
"Businesses seek to hire the most innovative workers, making arts education essential to landing the most competitive jobs," says Marisa. "Without structured opportunities to explore the arts and business, low-income youth can't earn the cultural capital vital for class mobility," she says.
In 2009, Starting Artists received a StarbucksTM Shared PlanetTM Youth Action Grant through the International Youth Foundation to launch the Creative Entrepreneurs Club. Its goal: to enable teenagers to apply their creative skills to benefit local nonprofit organizations. To see these youth in action, view a slideshow.
The importance of nurturing creativity is perhaps best summed up by best selling author Daniel Pink, who in A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future writes, "The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a different kind of mind - creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people - artists, inventors, designers, storytellers... will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys."
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YouthActionNet® pays tribute to all its Global Fellows who are using the arts and creativity in their social change work:
Ramzi Aburedwan, founder, Al Kamandjâti, Palestine
Therese Clarence Fernandez, co-founder, Rags2Riches, Philippines
Alex Kelly, founder, Ngapartji Ngapartji, Australia
Jessica Lax & Jocelyn Land-Murphy, co-founders, The Otesha Project, Canada
John Piermont Montilla, founder, Kabataang Gabay sa Positibong Pamumuhay, Philippines
Maritza Morales, founder, Hunab Theme Park, Mexico
Laiden Pedrina, founder, Young Artists Fellowship for the Environment, Philippines
Benita Singh, co-founder, Mercado Global, United States
Deepika Singh, Udaan, India
Courtney Spence, founder, Students of the World, United States
Carla Tennenbaum, founder, EVAMARIA, Brazil
Photo credit: Home page photo courtesy of Chanan Development Association, Pakistan
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