|
|
 |
by Jessica D. Holt
Terence
Terence is twenty. He lives with his
aunt in Zuni, New Mexico. His first Bauen Camp
experience was in 2005, as one of sixty U.S.
campers, and one of six youth from the Zuni Pueblo.
Selected and funded by the Zuni 21st Century
Education Project, Terence was chosen for his
artistic promise and the ability to be an outstanding
carrier of traditional Zuni culture. With a big
grin, including dimples that covered his seemingly
timid nature, Terence soon exhibited his forte — making
beautiful clay pots. His "hard work" ethic
also became apparent. Just a few days into the
camp, Terence was on the phone talking to an
uncle, getting the "recipe" for a
traditional Zuni kiln to be built near the camps' campfire
site. The kiln was dug, and campers made pots
and took turns sitting up all night to tend the
fire, flying back home so proud that they carried
the pots they had made in their bare hands.
By
the spring of 2006, three of the six 2005 Zuni
boys called to ask if they could come back. That
year, Terence won the New Mexico State Fair Grand
Prize for his pottery. He was invited to return
to Bauen as a Counselor-in-Training; his brother,
Daniel, and a tall Arapaho boy, Skylar, who lived
on the Zuni reservation, also returned. All three
were outstanding participants in our programming
and generous in sharing their culture.
Based
on his general good nature and work reaching
out to boys who might be problematic during his
first CIT year, we invited Terence to return
in 2007 for another CIT year. It was the year
of his blossoming — that spring he was
the first in his family to graduate high school.
He modeled good behavior, learned many new skills
in the multi-disciplinary Bauen workshops, shared
his writing at campfires, and by example taught
campers how to "pitch in" and help "run
the place." His creative spirit was strong
and important, funny, and wise. He kept daily
measurements of the water levels in our cisterns,
helped with cooking, scrubbed dishes, taught
pottery workshops, conducted overnight "cooking
of the pots" in the kiln, and helped his
fellow CITs to produce our colorful 2007 yearbook.
Though staff helped him, reading did not come
easily to Terence, through art — drawing,
building pots, and welding sculptures — Terence
found a means to express himself and develop
in a non-traditional setting.
This year, Terence
was invited to be a counselor, teaching nature
workshops, fishing, and hiking. Befriending Latino,
African-American, Caucasian, and other native
teen artists from urban and rural locales across
the U.S., Terence connected them in a Building
Workshop utilizing individual and group skills.
Through his efforts, Bauen now has a mystical
shelter wedged between giant cottonwoods on the
way to the vegetable garden. Named "the
lookout", it is a fifteen foot square "open-faced"
floor made of old aspen, facing directly west
to catch the sunsets, set up off the ground on
stilts with a railing on the sides to prevent
falling, big enough for six to eight people to
immerse themselves in all of nature present there.
And now, after three months at Bauen, Terence
has once again returned to the Zuni Pueblo.
He
wants to keep learning and be paid for work that
he does well, so he can go back to Zuni one day
and help lead the re-building of his community.
His story is just one of the stories that Bauen
has been privileged to experience since its inception
in 2000.
The Big Questions
How do you ‘build" community
leaders? What does "art" have to
do with solving important community and global
issues? What does a camp in Wyoming have to do
with the lives and passions of young teens from
across the United States?
The Bauen Camp is honored
to have the opportunity to share our work and
attempt to answer these questions. It is the
camp's hope that the reader will discover
new ideas for sowing the seeds of creativity
in their own camp communities.
Who Are We?
The Bauen Camp, Inc. is an intentionally
small independent nonprofit 501(c)3 residential
summer camp whose mission is to use the arts
to empower exceptional young artists thirteen
to eighteen, nurturing them to develop their
leadership potential and civic engagement in
order to strengthen the social fabric of their
communities. Thirty co-ed teens from across the
U.S. and elsewhere come together at Bauen each
summer session amidst seventy acres of rolling
foothills in the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming.
There, students grow their creativity and leadership
skills, share their talents, and explore the
building of a new community together.
How We Began
The birth of the Bauen Camp in 2000
was the unintentional outcome of my philosophy
thesis. I was seeking the optimum methods for
artists to employ in order to foster social change
(Holt 2000). An art camp for kids that integrates
art and life skills was the dream that became
a reality. "Bau" means to build or
nurture in German. Today, Bauen aims to nurture
young artists, empowering them to develop their
leadership potential and civic engagement in
order to strengthen the social fabric of their
communities.
Victor Turner's concept of
liminality — the idea that there are special
times and spaces outside of the habitual rhythms
of everyday life that are particularly fertile
for changing people's assumptions and goals — was
the key for me to building an understanding of
a creative space for artists to develop new ideas.
Turner describes a space that is empty enough
from the realities of everyday structure in order
to leave room for play to develop potential alternatives
(Turner 1987). Play theorists Brian Sutton-Smith
and Mihalyi Spariosu support Turner's approach,
identifying ambiguity and incongruity as essential
to developing the other ways of seeing that lead
to innovative approaches (Sutton-Smith 1997 and
Spariosu 1989). Wilhelm Dilthey describes other
ways of seeing as "experience and self-understanding
and the constant interaction between them (Dilthey
1976)." This interaction activates the
liminal experience, offering the possibility
of novelty.
The theoretical space described by
these academics is the kind of space I wanted
to provide to young artists from the outset. Today,
it is the same space we continue to seek in our
programming — fostering space, a space
for campers to imagine in.
Like a good painting,
once founded, the Bauen Camp took on a life of
its own. Innovation and experimentation, dignity
and respect for the work of artists, justice,
and hope for the future of the young campers
provided the framework for the new camp.
Within
a few years, the campers' communities grew
to include cities and towns all over the U.S. — teens
from urban ghettos, reservations, isolated rural
areas, and immigrant communities — with
some youth nominated by schools and youth development
organizations we had contacted because of their
reputation for outstanding use of the arts in
serving youth. We believed strongly that many
of these teens had exceptional creative and leadership
potential. They also needed scholarships. Our
goal was to carefully select the teens exhibiting
that potential and give them the time and the
financial support, the fresh air, and the love
to flourish (Socolow 2007).
Research confirmed
that using the arts to build social creativity
and responsibility among low-income teen artists
would provide challenges but also meet a real
need — that is, addressing a "poverty
of imagination" — a lack of belief
in oneself and in one's community that
positive change can happen. The structural and
cultural problems that keep economic poverty
in place — lack of access, education, and
resources — seem overwhelming to teens
in these communities, and there are a lot of
them. Thirty-five percent of children ages thirteen
to seventeen — 7.4 million — live
in low-income families where violent crime, gang
presence, and homicide rates have shown growth
in recent years (Cauthen 2008). J. B. Schramm
has found that teens are the most influential
group in low-income communities and that transforming
these communities requires the leadership of
community members, not outsiders like ourselves
(Schramm 2004). We were thus inspired to challenge
these young artists to become the leaders in
their communities.
Acknowledging the pivotal
role that teenagers play in low-income communities
and the lack of belief or hope among so many
became the primary incentives for Bauen to establish
its National Youth Artist Outreach Project in
2005. The Project is comprised of a residential
summer camp, mentoring to continue learning begun
at camp, community projects, professional development,
an outreach network, and evaluation project.
With this project came Bauen's commitment
to focus in five geographic areas, to focus its
year-round services on thirteen- to eighteen-year-old
disadvantaged young artists, and to build a network
of "can-do" charismatic indigenous
leaders with imagination, vision, skills, and
the credibility to improve their communities.
Today, working with a network of more than ninety local
youth organizations and schools in the five focus
areas — Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis/ St.
Paul, New York City, and the State of Wyoming — and
across the U.S., we select a diverse group of sixty
disadvantaged youth to attend the camp each summer,
a dozen or so young artists who pay their own way,
guest artist/session directors, counselors who
are also teachers, counselors-in-training, interns,
and, in 2008, Education Fellows. Since 2000, Bauen
has served 339 young artists in residential camp
programs. These participants represent 131 communities
with 94 adults in staff and professional development
programs.
What We Do
Bauen Camp programs evidence three
areas of focus in a unique combination:
- Use
of multi-disciplinary art forms (creative writing,
visual art, and performance) as critical tools
in positive youth development, in building
social and cultural awareness, and in developing
awareness of the role of aesthetic development
in the cognitive growth of young people;
- The application of play theory to programming
in order to integrate the concept of play as
a way to discover the world, increasing the
possibility of creative growth; and
- Use
of the resident camp as a seminal site for
generating creative, diverse, socially responsible,
and democratic young artists and communities.
How We Do It
Transformation from
extraordinary young artists to community leaders
can happen where there is intensive cultivation
with Bauen programs designed specifically for
this purpose.
- We begin by working with
the greatest diversity — geographic, ethnic,
racial, and economic — of outstanding organizations,
campers, and staff that we can find. Campers
engage with unfamiliar people and locales to
break out of normative assumptions.
- We
intentionally create a small focused community
of no more than forty-five people, so that
one-on-one relationships flourish and so that
in-depth, cumulative exploration of a variety
of art skills and processes can be nurtured
over three-week sessions.
- We teach young people how to
exchange ideas about challenging social and
cultural issues — and how to express that exchange
through the arts, enhancing their understanding
of the role they can play in creating the world
they want to live in.
- We teach interpersonal
and group communication skills, such as Liz
Lerman's Critical Response Process and Open
Space Technology, because we know that without
such skills no amount of technical skills in
the arts matter (Lerman 1993 and Owen 1997).
- Young artists at the Bauen Camp also
have the opportunity to be deeply immersed
in the natural world, sleeping out under the
stars, catching the beat of the crickets' song,
building a connection between themselves and
nature.
- We provide time for play, for
"shifting mindsets," because we know that play
teaches creativity, fostering other ways of
seeing than the way things have always been.
Games like ambush, river floats, hikes up the
mountain, and swinging under the cottonwoods
open up channels of receptivity to alternative
ways of being.
- We teach
youth how they can use many different kinds
of art as instruments of positive change, in
their own lives and in the lives of their families
and communities. Dance and poetry, painting
and singing, puppetry, video and photography,
and theater all become modes of expression
used to build students' awareness of their
role in social responsibility.
- We are
youth advocates. We believe in the spirit and
energy of youth. We call our programming "youth-led"
because we offer young people the opportunity
to participate in the identification, design,
development, and implementation of projects,
ultimately sharing their work with the public.
- Campers
are mentored with role models, not just coaches.
Young artists at the Bauen Camp have the opportunity
to be immersed in the intimate setting of an
artist's home and life and in the teaching
and life examples of the exceptional "teaching
artists" on staff, with a ratio of three
campers to each adult.
At Bauen, campers are
surrounded by the huge landscape, its sounds,
smells, light, and space, and the traditions
of this western country. We attend the Sheridan
Rodeo, hike in the terrain, swim the river, study
the night skies, dance the square dance, and
listen to the stories of local lives and local
history. We learn about ourselves in relationship
to this new place. We learn about each other,
too, and begin to build our own community.
What
Results Do We Achieve? How Are These Measured?
Bauen
initiated a collaborative Evaluation Project
in 2005 with the University of Wyoming Department
of Psychology, the Center for the Arts in New
Jersey, and Rutgers University School of Social
Work. The purpose of this project was to evaluate
the Bauen National Youth Artist Outreach Project.
The evaluation was focused on the summer program
component of the National Project. The Evaluation
Survey was created by UW Master of Counselor
Education candidates using Standardized small
s-instruments. The Project showed statistically
significant growth in campers' self-efficacy
(empowerment) and self-identity, 2005-2007, and
an increase — though not statistically
significant — n their "locus of control" (greater
amount of internal forces of control) and "belief
in a changeable world" (belief that our
world/society is changeable) scores, 2006 and
2007, all key ingredients in the growth and ability
of youth to be resilient and to provide leadership
to their communities (Van Alst).
Bauen's
National Youth Artist Outreach Project is a comprehensive
program addressing the arts, culture, and the
humanities; youth; community improvement and
capacity building; and ethnic and cultural diversity.
In its early stages, as the Project developed,
we identified outcomes and their indicators that
we sought with this programming. They include:
- To
increase self-expression and communication
skills through the arts, indicated by critical,
thoughtful, and in-depth content in individual
and network art projects;
- To increase leadership,
critical thinking, and problem-solving skills
indicated by significant participation levels
in youth network programs and projects;
- To
increase individual and community understanding
of social issues and cross-cultural understanding
indicated by chosen content of program, projects,
and leadership decisions;
- To increase
organizational collaboration, indicated by
local, regional, and national projects involving
new partnerships;
- To increase community health,
indicated by increase in the number of community
collaborations and accessible arts programs;
- To
document, refine, replicate, and distribute
the Bauen Youth Outreach Project model in the
United States and elsewhere, indicating that
the arts are a critical vehicle in youth development
when integrated with the building of life skills.
Through
the National Youth Artist Outreach Project, Bauen
seeks to transform exceptional young artists
into "can-do" indigenous
leaders and collaborators who will work to change
the social fabric of their impoverished communities.
Bauen teaches youth that their voices are important,
that they can make a difference, and that standing
up and fighting for change is right.
The exposure
to career options, mentors, outreach activities,
and peer support may not turn all of the campers
into professional artists, but it will make them
more likely to graduate from high school, pursue
higher education, and become leaders in their
communities — all
the things they need to do to break the cycle of
poverty that they may have grown up in.
Youth become
aware, were they not before, that lack of education
is a critical impediment to their personal growth
in many areas. Their creative and leadership
potential becomes the pathway to this awareness.
This awareness, along with the opportunity for
scholarships, and the requirement to raise a
portion of their own camp fee, renews faith in
many young campers that they can, indeed, be "can-do" leaders
in their own communities.
And Terence?
What will
he do next? The U.S. Navy has been calling him
on the phone, aware of his welding skills and
work ethic. Clara Waloff, an NYU trained NYC
art teacher and five-year Bauen staffer, has
encouraged him to apply to a nature art school
in New Mexico. And the welding teacher at Sheridan
College in Wyoming wishes he would return to
the Welding Rodeo this summer and then enroll
at SC this fall. Knowing that Terence has found
his voice through the arts and believes in himself
and his ability to make a positive difference
in the world, we will watch with much interest
as he considers the choices before him. This
summer Terence mentored a thirteen-year-old Cheyenne
Nation camper, Cameron by name, who asked the
same questions that Terence asked during his
first year as a camper. And, so, the cycle continues.
I am deeply grateful to have been a part of
the lives of the youth and staff and volunteers
and donors who have come our way, and to know
that the arts are at work here at Bauen among
the young people, helping to build a better world.
I am also very grateful for the time, support,
and thoughtfulness given by my children — Douglas Holt, Melissa
Moore, Nancy Wright, and Cynthia Holt — in
the development of this project.
References
Holt, Jessica. (2000). The
Ritualization of Political Art: Using the Structure
of Ritual Practice in Society to Redirect the
Element of Play in Political Art; MA Thesis,
Philosophy. Colorado State University, Fort Collins,
CO. 267 pages.
Socolow, Daniel J. (2007).
Harvard Business Review: Genius Awards, June;
in May 17, 2007 Chronicle of Philanthropy, 36.
Turner, Victor. (1987). From
Ritual to Theater: The Human Seriousness of Play;
New York: PAJ Publications, 28, 44.
Sutton-Smith,
Brian. (1997). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Spariosu, Mihalyi.
(1989). Dionysus Reborn: Play and the Aesthetic
Dimension in Modern Philosophical and Scientific
Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Dilthey, Wilhelm.(1976). Dilthey:
Selected Writings. Ed. H.P. Rickman. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Cauthen, Nancy K.,
Ph.D., and Sarah Fass. (2008). The Nature of
Poverty; National Center for Children in Poverty,
Columbia University, Mailman School of Public
Health.
Schramm, J.B. In How To Change
the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power
of New Ideas, David Bornstein. Oxford University
Press. 176.
Andreason, Nancy C., M.D.,
Ph.D. (2005). The Creating Brain; New York, NY,
The Dana Foundation, Book Cover.
Lerman, Liz.
(1993). Critical Response Process: A Tool for
Action in the Arts and Beyond; see Web site of
Dance Exchange, www.danceexchange.org.
Owen,
Harrison. Open Space Technology: A User's Guide; (1997). San Francisco,
Berett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Evans, Richard.
(2003). Powerful Voices: Developing High-Impact
Arts Programs for Teens; Surdna Foundation.
Van
Alst, Donna, Associate Director, Institute for
Families, Rutgers University School of Social
Work; Saperstein, Lois, Executive Director, Center
for the Arts; Tonak, Beckie and Plant, Megan,
M.S. in Counseling candidates, University of
Wyoming Counselor Education Dept. Bauen Camp
Evaluation Report 2007 Season, and Comparison
of Years 2005-2007.
Originally published
in the 2008 November/December issue of Camping
Magazine.
|
