Learning in the Arts  

Creativity and the arts give people new and unique ways of thinking and expressing. For young people, arts experiences provide opportunity to explore, imagine and communicate through creative expression. At Boys & Girls Clubs, art forms are categorized into the following four pillars: Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Digital Arts and Applied Arts. This Collection contains experiences specific to Performing Arts, which includes dance, theatre, music and spoken word.

Arts programs and learning experiences in Clubs are grounded by evidence-based strategies that effectively drive engagement, retention and skill-building among youth. These strategies include developing positive relationships with adult mentors, cultivating a culture of high expectations and respect for creative expression, providing physically and emotionally safe spaces for creative expression and ensuring arts programming culminates in high-quality public events, experiences and/or products.   

Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s approach to the arts includes three levels of learning for creative youth development experiences:   

Exposure: Foundational experiences that provide opportunities to explore, play and experiment with different art forms or media  

Skill-Building: Intermediate experiences that build social-emotional skills and technical skills in an art form or media   

Demonstration: Opportunities to demonstrate skills or techniques that contribute to a portfolio or culminating event, experience or product   

Understanding Exposure Experiences   

All young people are curious. Exposure experiences in the arts are centered on curiosity and inquiry based learning. This positions youth as leaders of their own learning and caring adults as facilitators of a young person’s exploration. The idea behind providing exposure experiences as the first arts learning level is to create multiple entry points for all young people to experience arts in their own way. Exposure experiences have the following components:  

Lead with questions: Facilitators should guide exposure experiences using questions rather than instructions as guideposts. Start dialogue by using phrases like:  

• What would happen if … ?  
• What do you think should come next ... ?  
• What else could you try ... ?  

It is important to see exposure experiences as the place where young people can explore and “try on” an art form, versus build skills and technique.   

Promote exploration: Experiences should not have an end goal, but rather these should be times to be playful, experiment and try many different approaches:  

• Try to have a variety of tools or objects to explore.  
• Play along with young people so they see your experimentation as well.  
• Spend time creating, but not making it “look, sound, act” like something specific.   

Celebrate individuality: Encourage and celebrate the individual ways young people approach something (there is no right or wrong here!):  

• Allow youth to explain what they created (versus what you think they created). 
• Illuminate the ways different youth approached something.  
• Reframe the idea of “fail” to instead be, “first attempt in learning.”   

Remember, while artistic skill may be built through exposure to experiences in the arts, that is not the goal. Your goal is to create environments for safe and fun exploration! Not every young person will want to move on to learn more specific skills in an art form, but every young person should have the opportunity to be exposed to a variety of art forms and media, and find a positive entry point.