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You
are here: Coming Up Taller
Every time we watch a child's face light up as she plays the first few notes of a song or puts the final touches on a painting, we see the power for the arts to educate and inspire. We know that exposure to the arts and humanities not only fires children's imaginations but also makes their spirits soar. Participation in the arts can help them think, learn, and grow. It can give them the positive alternatives they need to stay out of harm's way and the confidence to reach their God-given potential. -- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Coming Up Taller Awards, 1998
The Coming Up Taller Awards program is an initiative of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to focus national attention on and to support after school, weekend, and summer arts and humanities programs that use the arts, words, and ideas to provide children with paths to self-discovery, self-expression, and self-confidence. (See http://www.cominguptaller.org/)The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities
The President's Committee was created by Executive Order in 1982 to encourage private sector support and to increase public appreciation of the value of the arts and the humanities through projects, publications and meetings. Appointed by the President, the Committee is comprised of leading citizens from the private sector who have an interest in and commitment to the humanities and the arts.
Coming Up Taller is implemented in partnership with the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and is supported by these two public agencies, companies and corporations, and individuals.
Background
In September 1994, when President Clinton announced his administration's members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, he and the First Lady noted the importance of safeguarding and nurturing our children. They also recognized the powerful role the arts and humanities can play in children's learning and development. As a result, they asked the Committee to "offer ideas about how we can provide children with safe havens to develop and explore their own creative and intellectual potentials."
In response, the Committee launched a project to identify promising arts and humanities programs that reach young people who live in family and community circumstances that limit their development. The result was the publication of the landmark report, Coming Up Taller: Arts and Humanities Programs for Children and Youth at Risk (1996).
This report describes what is known about healthy child development, profiles over 200 arts and humanities programs addressing the basic needs of children and youth, and outlines the characteristics that make these programs effective. Through the programs documented in this report, performing and visual artists, media experts, museum professionals, librarians, historians and writers offer children creative and productive outlets for their energy; a chance to discover their creative potential; an opportunity to develop self-confidence, interpersonal relations and new skills; a stable environment in which to learn and develop; the possibility of contributing to community and family, and taking responsibility for their own futures.
The Coming Up Taller report broadened the conversation about the arts and the humanities by describing their positive influence on areas of concern to Americans: the well-being of children, school success, safety, constructive use of after-school and summer time, community connections, and workforce preparation.
Coming Up Taller was released by the First Lady at a White House event. Media coverage was extensive. Four years later, we still receive a steady flow of requests for the report, also available on our website http://www.pcah.gov, or go to http://www.cominguptaller.org/cominguptallerreport.txt to view an online text version of the report.
The Coming Up Taller Awards
To fulfill the request made by the President and First Lady to the President's Committee--to enhance the availability of the arts and the humanities to children--more than research in this area was needed. As follow-up to the Coming Up Taller report, in 1998 the President's Committee inaugurated the Coming Up Taller Awards program to recognize some of the outstanding organizations currently fostering the creative and intellectual development of America's youth through education and practical experience in the arts and the humanities.
The awards are presented to ten programs each year. Another 40 programs are recognized as semifinalists. Awardees receive an individualized plaque as well as a $10,000 cash award. Each year a new national jury of experts in the arts, humanities, and child and youth development makes recommendations to PCAH for award recipients. This annual recognition program is in its third year of operation.
This year we received 247 nominations for the ten awards. These nominations come from 44 states with the largest numbers from California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas.
These programs--located in performing arts and cultural centers, museums, Boys and Girls Clubs, public radio and television stations, churches, recreation centers, public housing complexes, homeless shelters, juvenile detention and teen centers, and settlement houses--are testament to the importance of cultural programming to civic and individual health.
In 1998, the awards were presented at a White House ceremony by the First Lady in her role as Honorary Chair of the President's Committee. Representatives of the winning programs/organizations and young people who participate in the programs accepted the awards. Other speakers included: Jesse Treviño, an internationally-acclaimed artist from San Antonio who lost his painting arm in the Vietnam War and has retrained himself to paint with his other arm; James McDaniel, an African-American actor currently known for his role as Lieutenant Fancy on NYPD Blue and a volunteer with one of the 1998 award-winning programs. In addition to the heads of the PCAH and the National Endowments for the Arts, Cabinet Secretaries Janet Reno, Donna Shalala and Richard Riley also attended the event, reinforcing the message of the importance of these programs to violence and crime prevention, after-school care, and learning.
The 1999 Awards ceremony, held in the Presidential Hall of the Old Executive Office Building, featured William Baldwin, actor and President of The Creative Coalition, as well as master glass artist Dale Chihuly. The Angkor Dance Troupe performed as did Isaac Colon III, a young poet with the DC WritersCorps project.
In addition to the Washington awards event, the President's Committee makes the trip to Washington, DC, a full experience for the award recipients, many of whom have never been on an airplane before. There is an informal dinner for award winners and members of the Washington national and local cultural community. In 1999, we provided a nighttime tour of Washington and a White House tour for the young people representing the winning programs and their chaperones.
To further the visibility of effective strategies for children using the arts and the humanities, a "working breakfast" is held at which representatives from the award-winning programs describe their work with young people to staff from other federal agencies, such as the Departments of Education, Labor, and Justice.
Since one of the goals of the awards program is to make decision-makers more aware of the power of these programs to positively impact young lives, the President's Committee has developed a communications component to the awards initiative. Each year we produce an awards booklet, describing the ten winning programs as well as listing the 40 semifinalists, and disseminate it broadly. Copies of this publication are sent to the media, through arts and humanities networks, and to grant-makers. All finalists and semifinalists received multiple copies to use in their promotional activities, including at press conferences, with funding proposals and reports. In addition, the publication is on our website as are descriptions of the semifinalists. Finally, each year we retain the services of a public relations firm to support the award-winning programs in gaining media coverage of their award and program.
Other Coming Up Taller Activities
In addition to the awards program, PCAH is working with a network of companies to bolster this field. These companies have assisted PCAH with our website design and ongoing programming, and provided free or reduced-cost design and printing services. In addition, we have two projects in development. With Samsonite, we are producing suitcases painted by celebrity artists, sports and entertainment figures for auction to benefit after-school arts programs. With the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), we are developing a "creativity kit" to be used by AIGA's members in local work with children. This project will provide children with adult mentors, a greater awareness of the role of design in our world, and a chance to hone creative problem-solving skills using design.
Conclusion
As we work to develop communities that reduce the risks to which children are exposed and promote their learning, safety, and resiliency, it is critical to provide children with exposure to a variety of learning opportunities and styles, different kinds of adult mentors and role models, and possibilities for positive relationships with peers, parents, and other adults. The arts community is a rich reservoir in this regard. The Coming Up Taller Awards are an effective strategy for encouraging an investment in community arts programs for children and youth.
In 1999, the President's Committee sponsored Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning, a compendium of seven new pieces of research documenting the impact of arts learning on young people and the nature of that experience. This compendium includes the results of decade-long research conducted by Shirley Brice Heath, a Stanford University professor, on learning outside of the school curriculum. ("Imaginative Actuality: Learning in the Arts during the Nonschool Hours," pp.19-34). Ms. Heath documents what the President's Committee observed in Coming Up Taller: Quality arts and humanities programs make a difference in the lives of young people.
Ms. Heath reports that "at-risk" youth in arts-focused youth organizations, when compared to a national sample of students, are more likely to win academic honors, more certain they would graduate from high school and continue study, more likely to feel self-respect, and more likely to receive a community service award.
In her research, Ms. Heath also identifies qualities in the creative experience that account for its impact on young people:
- Risk Taking. The range, degree, and frequency of risk taking are greater in the arts than in community service or athletic programs. Young people respond to the chance to "try new ways of doing old tasks or to apply tried methods to new media or methods of presentation. In the arts, divergent thinking was a norm right along with diligence, practice, and adherence to rules that ensured coherence of the group effort."
- Individual Identity. Although group output (especially in theater and music) dominates, each individual artist also has a separate and respected identity.
- Responsibility for Consequences. Critiques and reviews encourage anticipation of audience reaction, increase motivation for work, and bring a sense of investment and challenge that pushes achievement.
- Authentic Learning. While much of learning in the arts focuses on technique, past forms and masters, and market issues, the content of art is personal, drawing on the experiences and perceptions of each young person.
- Acting Towards the Future. In the arts, young people carry "within the head (and often within the body for dancers and actors) a sense of form, technique, connection, and thoughts toward the next work. Paradoxically, the ability to anticipate future possibilities emerges only when the mind is engaged with the intricacies and immediacies of present moments…such present attention and future action helps create a nimble mind, an observing eye, and a resolute spirit."
In the end, the power of the arts lies in its potential as a touchstone to our humanity. Creating, whether in theater, dance, music or the visual arts, builds a bond between artist and participant, and a bridge between disparate perspectives. This shared vision, honed from individual experience, touches at the heart of every young person's quest--to find a place in the adult world and to be acknowledged and accepted as an individual within that world.
About the Author: Judith H. Weitz is the Coordinator of Youth Projects for the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. You can reach her at:
Judith H. Weitz
Coordinator, Youth Projects
President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities
Suite 526
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20506
202/682-5409
JWeitz@neh.gov
© September 2002 New Horizons for Learning
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