Steel City Arts Initiative
Dedicated to empowering our youth by providing art and music education.
Leader
Lisa Drakes
Location
1205 Boyle Street Pittsburgh, PA 15212
About the project
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HELP ENSURE QUALITY, WELL-ROUNDED EDUCATION FOR OUR YOUTH!
Steel City Arts Initiative's goal is to bring culture, arts, and music education to ALL in the Pittsburgh area. Art and music are a necessity to not only our youth, but our community and our culture. They are as fundamental as any other school subject, and research has shown arts' ability to create resiliency, personality, and coping mechanisms that our youth lack and struggle without. Art and music empower our youth allowing them to grow into active members of society. Art and music allow children to develop motor skills, foster creativity, practice self expression, and increase resiliency. However, nationally, thirty percent of public elementary schools do not have art classes; not to mention secondary schools and private schools. That's why Young Men and Women's African Heritage Association launched Steel City Arts Initiative, or SCAI, to ensure our youth receive arts-centered education within Pittsburgh schools. Our goal is to bring arts-centered educators to all schools within Allegheny county that otherwise lack the funding to provide these classes. In order to do so, we are in need of supplies, educational materials, musical instruments and continued training of our educators to meet national standards of art and music curriculum. Once we have set roots within the schools, we plan on resurfacing past programs such as steel drums, quilting, and gardening in our community. We realized that some of our youth and adults interested in these classes had never received the basic education of arts, and that is why we want to work from the ground up. This would allow for unity, therapeutic and cultural development, and cultivate healthy, resilient, self empowered, and creative youth as the future for our community and world. These youth can continue to use and teach others what they have learned, thus creating a domino effect of positive interaction and community involvement.
But, we need your help! To ensure our youth are receiving quality arts-centered education, we are in need of donations to purchase art supplies and musical instruments, as well as to continue to train our staff of educators and supply them with quality educational materials.
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The Steps
Step 1: Purchase art supplies and musical instruments that are needed for national standards curriculum.
Step 2: Continue education/training for our art and music educators
Step 3: Update educational materials for our teachers.
Step 4: Cultivate quality arts-centered education for our youth
Step 5: Allow our youth to teach our community what they have learned.
Step 6: Repeat
Why we‘re doing it
Our goal is to ensure all children receive a quality education to share with the community. Through art and music, children are able to learn from their mistakes, experiment, express themselves, embrace culture and diversity, and develop into their own identities. These are crucial learning experiences for every person in our society. If our youth learn these skills young, they are able to teach our community what they have learned, and create a more unified society.