Partnership, Power and Promise in Youngstown
Students Motivated by the Arts (SMARTS) provides after school arts instruction. Students' theater productions add to the excitement of Youngstown's cultural revitalization.
Revitalizing waves of creativity have been flowing through downtown Youngstown, Ohio. Industrial age structures have become artists' spaces, and the recently opened DeYor Performing Arts Center keeps the night vibrant with concerts by the Youngstown Symphony and other cultural events.
Afternoons have a different creative energy though, energy that comes from an innovative K-12 arts education program called SMARTS—Students Motivated by the Arts. A partnership between Youngstown State University's College of Fine and Performing Arts and Beeghly College of Education, SMARTS helps the community's most underprivileged students experience the joy and discipline of arts learning and exemplifies what strong nonprofit arts education programs in urban centers can mean to students, teachers and communities.
A Web of Arts Learning Partners
The SMARTS Center, an 8,000 square foot space situated within the walls of the DeYor, offers all the facilities needed for powerful arts learning, including a visual arts classroom, private practice rooms, music ensemble rooms and a theater/dance workshop area.
Students and teachers come from all over the community for the SMARTS holiday open house. Arts activities and the world's largest bowl of candy are among the surprises that await them.
Students in kindergarten through high school come there after school, on Saturday mornings and during the summer for dance, visual arts, music and theater classes, as well as private and small group music lessons.
Participation is free for K-12 students from throughout the region with the Center's primary focus and funding serving those who reside in the city of Youngstown. Many of the students' parents say those arts learning opportunities would not otherwise be possible for their children.
A collaborative web of arts learning partners is what gives SMARTS programs their outstanding quality—quality that earned SMARTS the Ohio Art Education Association's designation of Distinguished Organization for Art Education and made it a 2006 semifinalist for a Coming Up Taller award from the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. SMARTS Director Rebecca Keck says SMARTS is flourishing because of the university's unwavering support, the creativity and expertise added by volunteers and teachers from the local arts community and the dedication of her small staff, whose members all hold part-time positions but give full-time commitment and results.
The breadth and quality of the programs offered by SMARTS is possible, she says, because of "amazing pre-service teachers" from Youngstown State University. SMARTS is an arts learning laboratory for YSU education majors. That partnership means that future teachers work with real students in a dynamic arts education setting and benefit from the supervision of both teacher educators and fine arts faculty, as well as from collaboration with visiting artists.
A Community-Wide Cause
The vision of SMARTS has captured the hearts and imaginations of numerous community partners. Prominent local artists give generously of their time and talents. A grant from the Raymond John Wean Foundation, which supports community investment and education in Mahoning and Trumbull Counties, has enabled the organization to hire a music educator, add more student teachers and expand the music curriculum. A partnership with the Mahoning County Salvation Army and use of its instruments has paved the way for almost 30 additional students in the past two years to take lessons and play in a new brass ensemble. Numerous area businesses donate services, supplies, equipment and food for events. U.S. Congressman Tim Ryan, who represents Youngstown and the surrounding Mahoning Valley, helps share the SMARTS story. Citizens faithfully attend the SMARTS annual fundraiser Mad About the Arts, held in conjunction with the McDonough Museum of Art.
But while SMARTS benefits from the community's generosity and involvement, this arts education partnership also is making a valuable contribution to the community's civic life and perhaps even its future.
A Valuable Downtown Resource
The SMARTS Center enhances Youngstown's Federal Plaza Corridor, the heart of the city and the locus of many community development projects. The Center's beautiful public gallery and its shop, which sells handmade jewelry and other works of art, add to the cultural vitality of daily city life. Keck believes the laughter and activity of SMARTS students also enliven the cityscape. "The place has power," she says. "Children and families come downtown from all over the city with a newfound sense of ownership about where they live."
Learn More
Visit the SMARTS Center's Web site to learn more about its programs.
Find out more about how the arts help revitalize downtown areas by visiting the Ohio Arts Council's Arts Making the Case. Its searchable Arts Part of the Solution database includes articles about Youngstown and other communities.
Not far from the SMARTS Center is another symbol of community renewal—the Youngstown Business Incubator. That organization houses several innovative start-up technology companies that promise a new chapter in the Mahoning Valley's economic history. The YBI's chief development officer, Julie Michael Smith, says she views the SMARTS program as an integral part of Youngstown's future. "The arts are part of the larger dynamic ecosystem where innovative thought and entrepreneurship can thrive," she says. "I believe that exposing students to the arts helps them think creatively, gain a broader perspective of the world around them and develop other qualities that drive innovation."
CEO Mike Broderick, whose company Turning Technologies, LLC began at the YBI, agrees. He welcomes the possibility that SMARTS students may some day apply for jobs with his company, which develops and markets audience response, presentation and learning tools used by many educators in assessment and data-driven decisionmaking. "Of course, marketing and product development benefit from people who are skilled in the arts," he says. "But I think people with a background in the arts also do well in sales and technical jobs. They think about how to accomplish their goals."
A Community-Wide Asset
While SMARTS is part of a revitalized downtown Youngstown, its power extends far beyond the city center.
SMARTS provides arts classes for after-school programs at schools in nearby Girard and Mineral Ridge, and the SMARTS staff collaborates with area teachers on enriching their arts programs and integrating learning in the arts and other subject areas. "I tell teachers to use SMARTS for the things they dream about," says Keck.
SMARTS also holds drum circles, performances and classes at community events around the Mahoning Valley. A local children's hospital, a juvenile detention center and other community organizations that serve children and youth with special challenges also benefit from the SMARTS program's outreach.
But it is the students participating in SMARTS who will carry its benefits most powerfully into the community's future. "Literacy is at the core of our mission, and the arts also teach discipline, focus, self-awareness, teamwork and determination," says Keck. "Those are our most important community impacts—what students take back to school with them."
SMARTS students receive free music lessons.
This article was published in June 2009, Volume 5, No 1.
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