Community Arts Partner

Participant Details

Community Arts Partner Name

BAYFEST Youth Theatre / BAYFEST Education

Partner Type

1

Profile Photo

Individual Bio or
Organizational Statement

Our mission is to "Develop the Extraordinary Potential of Youth through Dramatic and Active Arts." Founded in 1990, BAYFEST has an extensive history offering powerful opportunities for young people, primarily ones who come from low-income and historically underserved populations and schools, to experience meaningful self- exploration through the dramatic and active arts (storytelling, personal narratives, movement, rhythm, kinesthetic learning). Over 80% of our participants over the years have been free-and reduced-lunch eligible. Our programs also provide K-12 educators with professional development sessions geared to address each school's particular concerns and give them powerful tools to transform their classrooms by integrated use of Active Arts techniques, sustain their own energy and enjoyment, and advance student success and learning. Always embedded in our work is the goal to address racial, gender and other social and educational equity disparities while building imagination, social-emotional learning and arts literacy. We make sure that our staff of teaching artists reflects the diverse populations we serve, and we always seek to partner with other organizations and artists who bring their own cultures and history to their work. Honoring and sharing students' own stories and connecting them to larger community stories and tales from many cultures remains a powerful way of working for us, and is guiding the development of all our current and planned programs.

BAYFEST has operated since 1990: in New York (7 years), Los Angeles (12 years), and Seattle (9 years),in 6 states and around the UK. Our programs have focused on building students' life skills in creative and critical thinking, communication, collaboration, perseverance and a 'growth mind-set' -- through drama, storytelling, personal narratives, movement, rhythm, kinesthetic learning. Working primarily with LMI students and the educators who work with them, we always have the embedded goals of addressing racial, gender and other social/educational equity disparities while building imagination, social-emotional learning and arts access and literacy. Since 2014 we have worked exclusively in the Puget Sound Region, and are focussed on “going deep” in a few schools, rather than “going wide” in many, reflecting our belief that extended engagements with teachers and students are more impactful than one-off or short-term workshops, and strongly desired by schools. In that time, we have offered 8 in-school student performance workshops, 9 professional developments, and 5 summer Youth Theatre Intensives. We are currently working in 3 schools for the entire 2018/19 school year with K-12 teachers and students through our “Native Tales” project (staging original student-devised versions of Northwest Indigenous tales and personal monologues of our participants), as well as drama-skills classes, student performance projects, summer youth theatre intensives, and educator professional developments on using drama and kinesthetic-learning techniques in the classroom.