AiS Grantee Highlight: Youth Employment Academy
RedLine is a proud partner and administrator of the Arts in Society grant. This collaborative program provides grants to both individuals and organizations that use art as a vehicle to promote social justice and community welfare.
We love highlighting our Arts in Society (AiS) grant recipients and all the unique and impactful projects made possible by their grant.
We’re excited continue this series with the 2022 AiS Grantee: The Youth Employment Academy!
Learn all about their Arts in Society-funded project Edible Artscapes and how it taught youth to create a regenerative urban farming installation with integrated artistic elements in an under-resourced neighborhood.
What is the Youth Employment Academy?
The Youth Employment Academy (YEA) is a non-profit organization with a mission to serve young adults, ages 14-24, in breaking the cycle of generational poverty across Denver by gaining personal and economic stability through education, arts, technology, and employment training.
YEA’s vision is that every youth shall have a stable environment offering empowerment through education and economic opportunities in order to grow and become positive members of a vibrant living community. YEA originated as a program of the Denver Housing Authority (DHA) in 2007.
YEA became a stand-alone non-profit in 2012 and in 2013 our social enterprise, the Osage Café was opened as a youth culinary training incubator bringing healthy, affordable food and job opportunities to the community.
All About The Arts Street Program at the Youth Employment Academy
In 2016, YEA acquired Arts Street, and expanded our academies into the creative industries.
Arts Street was an award winning, established non-profit that had been leading youth in career paths in arts-based programming since 1995.
Arts Street is our creative industries training program that cultivates low-income/underserved youth into valuable members of the creative workforce. It uses the power of the arts and technology to engage youth in learning and career development, nurture leadership, build integrity and help the community at-large.
Through the years, Arts Street has been recognized for its outstanding arts programming, including a 2004 COMING UP TALLER award and a 2008 US Department of Labor Workforce Innovation grant (WIRED) creating programming to cluster arts and technologies training to guide youth into higher paying jobs in the creative industries.
In 2015, it received an “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (only one of 60 in the nation.) In 2017, Arts Street was named, Denver’s “Best Youth Arts Program” by Westword magazine as well as “Outstanding Non-Profit Partner,” by Denver Public Schools’ Career Connect/Career Launch program.
Arts Street has also been awarded the INC Youth Civic Engagement award twice, once in 2019 for our immigration project titled Journey to Unity and in 2021 for our EnvironMENTAL project which focused on eco-anxiety and environmental racism and empowering youth to create change.
Tell about your Arts in Society grant-funded project Edible Artscapes
Our AIS grant has been used to fund a 2022 interactive youth project inside of our Art Street Program called Edible Artscapes.
Food insecurity/food deserts, as well as lack of knowledge and land for growing food, are a real issue in the Denver area. These areas are defined as any section of an urban center where access to fresh food is more than a mile away and residents, often BIPOC, rely on corner stores and fast-food as their main source of nutrition. These areas are also frequently industrial with limited green spaces, public art and neighborhood beautification
Edible Artscapes worked with youth from underserved and marginalized communities, ages 14-21, to learn the principles of permaculture design to create a regenerative urban farming installation with integrated artistic elements in an under-resourced neighborhood.
Through their experience, youth learned techniques for planting and maintaining garden space, for creating public art and produced easy to share information about the process.
This connected them to the practice of gardening in order to secure their own nutritional food and also helped them take pride in their work through prominent art installations.
In addition, youth earned stipends for their work, learning basic job readiness skills while creating change in their community.
For this project youth worked with local artist and permaculture specialist, Katy Casper, learning about urban farming, principles of permaculture design, ecosystems and also created an amazing regenerative urban farming installation with integrated art elements in Denver’s La Alma neighborhood.
Arts Street partnered with Denver Housing Authority and created the pilot urban garden in front of DHA’s Tapiz public housing residence.
To kick off this project, 10 youth artists worked in spring 2022 to present to community members at DHA’s Local Resident Council to survey residents and get feedback on the project.
At these meetings youth learned top priorities from the community for the project, such as beautification of the neighborhood, as well as specific plants and colors that residents were interested in seeing in the installation.
With the majority of the physical work on the installation happening in summer of 2022, youth worked with Arts Street artist/instructor Chelsea Romaniello in ways to education the greater community through digital art.
Youth learned about different topics of urban farming and permaculture such as companion planting, food forests, pollinators, and urban ecosystems. Youth artists then met with David Moke of Night Lights Denver to learn about large scale animations. Night Lights Denver projects these animations onto Denver’s 16th street clock tower for the public throughout the year.
Youth learned Illustrator and After Effects software and created animations reflecting the different topics they studied. These animations were projected on the clock tower for everyone to see on May 19th and 20th and youth were able to celebrate this proud moment by viewing their art with family and friends.
Beginning in June 2022, Arts Street and lead artist, Katy Casper, worked with another 22 youth artists, over 6 weeks, to create the large urban garden with integrated art elements while delving deeper into the principles of permaculture design.
Through their experience, youth learned techniques for planting and maintaining garden space, exploring other urban ecosystems and community gardens and continuing discussions with the community for feedback.
Youth were able to get their hands dirty amending soil and planting their permaculture design and also designed and planted home containers so they could extend the knowledge at home.
Youth then focused on learning traditional art techniques for painting a public art mural as well as digital design with Adobe Illustrator. A focus was on how this installation could also educate the community and each youth was assigned a topic which they researched in depth about urban farming and/or the environment (such as bioremediation and desertification).
Youth then digitally designed a symbol for their topic and created a poster with facts and illustrations on their subject. The symbols were also incorporated into the large painted mural of the urban garden.
The posters will be displayed on the new Arts Street website and the garden will have signage with a QR code connecting the general public to the posters so they can learn more about urban farming, permaculture and more.
In addition to the mural painted on the urban garden planters, youth created painted pavers, creative plant labels and a 3-D sculpture for the middle of the garden as a home for pollinators. An unveiling celebration and dedication was held on July 21 with many community members attending and one of the DHA public housing residents cutting the red ribbon.
One elderly public housing resident said, “This has been a hard time for a few years and every time I walk past this garden it is so bright and beautiful and makes me happy!”
A story was broadcast on Rocky Mountain PBS, and one of our youth artists said it best, “The whole experience was really something…I really think [the art] is almost like a symbol of community.”
What's next in the pipeline for Youth Employment Academy in 2022? What other projects are you dreaming up this year, and how will your AiS grant help to support these projects?
Our Edible Artscapes project’s main programming components have been completed, however, we will still have some final components to wrap up this project.
Our youth designed informational posters will be added to our new website and there will be signage added to the garden with a QR code where the general public can immediately learn more about the project and specific topics such as regenerative agriculture.
One of our youth artists will work on creating a final video that highlights aspects of the project and we will continue to harvest food from our urban garden and provide that to the community for free for the next couple of months.
We will also continue to work with youth who participated throughout the year in the Edible Artscapes project through our mentorship and internship programs being held after school.
These programs will include mental wellness and basic needs support services as well as real-world client projects such as working on signage for units in DHA public housing and creating art products for our social enterprises to sell.
We also look forward to our ongoing partnership with Denver Public Schools Colorado High School Charter where Arts Street provides elective art classes for high school credit for their students throughout the school year.
What was your experience like when applying for an Arts in Society grant? What tips would you share with other artists or organizations looking to apply for an AiS grant?
The biggest tip we would give to other artists who are interested in applying for AIS is to apply for something you are passionate about.
It takes a lot of work to execute something that is really going to ignite change and engage community so make sure it’s something you really want to do.
We are so grateful, however, for the ease of the application and the flexibility of this stream of funding. Many grants do not offer the same flexibility which is so essential to really working with a community group.
Things almost never go as planned, and AIS makes it really easy to pivot and still make a big impact.
Meet Another 2022 AiS Grantee: Tri-Town Arts
Three arts-based organizations in the Lincoln County communities of Genoa (World’s Wonder View Tower/Historic Sentinel Building), Hugo (The Garage) and Limon (The Old Schoolhouse) united to develop and launch a placemaking and storytelling project to knit together communities and lives in rural Lincoln County.
We recently interviewed Chandler Romeo of the World’s Wonder View Tower to hear all about the Tri-Town Arts AiS project Uniting Rural Youth and Building Community Through Art in Lincoln County.