Intro:
Community, Art, Knowledge and Love, those are the 4 guiding principles of the Friends For A_dog Foundation, a Burlington non-profit focused in youth development around skateboard culture. Andy “A_dog” Williams was a skateboarder and DJ who became a local icon because of his passion and innovative career as an artist, but unfortunately he was diagnosed in 2012 with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and passed away in December of 2013 because of complications post-transplant. After the community suffered such a devastating loss, Friends and family of Andy came together to form the Friends for A_dog Foundation to rally the community around art, music and skateboard culture and to campaign for the critical need for bone marrow donorship. Though Burlington suffered a devastating loss, A_dog lives on through this foundation and his passions continue to play an important role in #unlearning consumerism for at risk youth in Vermont.
1. How do the arts, or more specifically, those encompassed by skateboard culture, positively impact the live of underprivileged youth in Vermont?
Skateboarding has received an unfair reputation among onlookers as delinquent and unproductive but those stereotypes are overshadowed by the positive impact it actually has within communities, especially in Chittenden County. One important piece of this puzzle is the low entry barrier of the sport. According to the National Center for Child Poverty, there are approximately 16, 200 children living below the poverty line in Vermont, for these families, paying for equipment, travel and other expenses of traditional sport is out of the question. We know the important role that sports play in social development and community building and skateboarding is an inexpensive way to make sure children are getting the social interaction they need. "I saw that it didn't matter how much money you had or where you came from, everyone was skateboarding together," says Neftalie Williams, a PhD student and skating ambassador. "It doesn't matter where we're at in the world you'll see that bond between all skateboarders”. The Friends for A_dog foundation (FFAF) reinforces that idea by providing scholarships, grants and day camps for talented youth in financial need. In an age where there is a decreasing disconnect between the tangible world and the digital world, the FFAF plays an important role in placing value on cultural awareness, inventiveness and decision making in the lives of young people, especially those in need of financial help.
Paragraph 2:
In addition to the important role that athletics play in the development of the young mind, it is increasingly more evident how important the arts are in the early stages of development. A study by Kenneth Elpus of the University Of Maryland suggests that adolescent arts students achieve significantly more positive developmental outcomes than their peers who do not pursue arts coursework in schools saying that art “is a generally positive context for youth development that promotes prosocial behaviors and successful developmental outcomes for all students, including those considered at-risk”. The A_dog foundation addresses this through the various camps and after school programs they organize, including their close relationship with local organizations like the King Street Center. The mission of the King Street Center, a organization dedicated to helping students with athletic, artistic and academic achievement, is to promote personal and social wellness through educational, recreational, and social programs.
https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Research-Art-Works-Maryland.pdf
Paragraph 3: Art influences Cultural Awareness: Inventiveness Decision Making
The value the arts hold in early education are often overlooked because of the heavy weight we place on science and math, in part due to the increasing demand for problem solvers. In a very barebones explanation, we learn through association, through forming connections between things. The more mediums involved in learning, the more opportunities there are for connections to be made and strengthened. “When students engage in arts processes, they develop distinct and complementary social practices: developing craft, engaging and persisting, envisioning, expressing, observing, reflecting, stretching and exploring, and understanding art worlds.” In addition, many of the fundamental issues we are trying to problem solve are not technological issues. They contain technological issues but they are not fundamentally technological issues. They are ethical ones. Medical professionals now engage with complex questions of inclusion, representation, voice and agency. According to a report by Americans for the Arts, art education strengthens problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. The experience of making decisions and choices in the course of creating art carries over into other parts of life. “If they are exploring and thinking and experimenting and trying new ideas, then creativity has a chance to blossom,” says MaryAnn Kohl, an arts educator and author of numerous books about children’s art education
Paragraph 4 How this relates to consumerism
Simply put, the community and mindset created by the arts and skateboard culture plays a direct role in offsetting the impacts of consumerism with an upstream approach. Instead of placing all the emphasis in programs that seek to pump out academics from our early education system, FFAF seeks to emphasize the value added to academia by engaging in non-traditional academic practices. This is most evident in the current debate on STEAM vs. STEM and how the arts fit into the equation. Students need more in-depth knowledge of math and science, plus the ability to integrate and apply that knowledge to solve the challenges facing our nation. If we equip our youth with a diverse set of problem solving skills, healthy lifestyles and self confidence, they will be much more prepared to unlearn consumerism right from the get go rather than falling directly into the vacuum responsible for our current global crisis. When kids are encouraged to express themselves and take risks in creating art, they develop a sense of innovation that will be important in their adult lives. “The kind of people society needs to make it move forward are thinking, inventive people who seek new ways and improvements, not people who can only follow directions,” says Kohl. “Art is a way to encourage the process and the experience of thinking and making things better! As we live in an increasingly diverse society, the images of different groups in the media may also present mixed messages. “If a child is playing with a toy that suggests a racist or sexist meaning, part of that meaning develops because of the aesthetics of the toy—the color, shape, texture of the hair,” says Freedman. Teaching children to recognize the choices an artist or designer makes in portraying a subject helps kids understand the concept that what they see may be someone’s interpretation of reality.