By Tracey Hartmann
High-quality arts programs find ways to showcase youth art—though culminating events like art exhibitions, listening parties, and film screenings. These events offer young people formative, pre-professional artistic experiences, and enable youth to realize that their creative expression matters. Culminating events can also open doors to new networks and opportunities in and beyond the arts.
How can multipurpose out-of-school time (OST) organizations, which routinely look for ways to recognize and celebrate young people, implement arts programs that culminate in high-quality events with real audiences?
Research from The Youth Arts Initiative (YAI), funded by The Wallace Foundation and implemented by Boys & Girls Clubs of America, shows that as multipurpose OST organizations elevate the quality of their arts programming, public culminating events become essential. This research codified key practices for high-quality arts programs into 10 Principles for High-Quality Arts Programs.
Research for Action and McClanahan Associates served as the research partners for YAI. Drawing from our learnings, we are publishing mini-briefs that explore each of the 10 Principles and offer actionable, practical strategies to implement youth arts programs in multipurpose OST settings.
In this mini-brief, we focus on Principle 5: Culminating Events.
Stay tuned for the next mini-brief in our series!