Using Art to Empower Teens and Enact Change
May 11th, 2009
A collaboration between Safe & Sound, WCS’s Project Excel and ArtWorks for Milwaukee helped several high school students gain critical job skills and employability training in the first of three apprenticeship classes planned this year. The “artists in training” were responsible for designing a logo and theme for Safe & Sound’s youth-led Crime Strategy Initiative. The design will adorn 200 t-shirts that will later be given to teams of youth from across the city who are working to plan and implement crime prevention and awareness campaigns and strategies for their neighborhoods. The CSI t-shirts will help to connect groups of youths who share a common mission to make their neighborhoods safer.
Project Excel, a program of Wisconsin Community Services, is one of 17 Safe Places participating in the CSI. They’ve partnered with ArtWorks for Milwaukee’s successful apprenticeship training program to help youth acquire the basic skills needed for future employment using art as the medium. At Project Excel, participants learned the art of silk screening, while being exposed to a real-world work experience. As part of the process, the young apprentices put on a professional gallery to exhibit their work and compete in a mock bidding process.
ArtWorks stresses inclusiveness in their selection of participants for the program, bringing youth together from all over the city in its efforts to foster cultural diversity, and to promote tolerance and integration. After completing the program, 75% of all participants go on to finish high school and more than half have gone on to secure gainful employment.
