exploring youth arts through the lens of youth sport
This article looks at youth arts practice through the lens of youth sport. It compares the disproportionate focus on the educational, health and welfare benefits of youth arts with youth sport’s aspirational focus on skills development and performance.
Researchers like Anna Hickey-Moody (2013) and Helen Cahill (2008) frequently write about the disproportionate focus on the educational, health and welfare benefits of youth arts practice. Their writing explores the idea that we often view youth arts as a model of diversion, redemption and/or self-improvement and that this focus can lead to the devaluing of the independent aesthetic function of youth arts. A more comprehensive examination of this issue can be found in recent doctoral research undertaken by artist-researcher Tiffaney Bishop, where the idea that young artists can be creative practitioners building artistic careers and pathways is explored. Bishop’s comprehensive analysis recognises the many community-based programs that support a young person’s general development and citizenship while highlighting the fewer community-based programs that support young people’s aesthetic development and citizenship.
Melbourne-based youth arts project tbC provides an innovative example of a youth arts model that focuses on the young artist’s aesthetic development and citizenship. Bishop is a co-founder of this thirteen-year-old youth-driven, adult and peer-mentored artist-run initiative. Instead of focusing on young members’ health, welfare and formal education, tbC focuses on dedicated art practices that advance creative careers and pathways. While tbC’s community location, socially inviting space and informal learning environment underpin the group’s accessibility and longevity, studio practices, conceptual thinking, and engagement with critical audiences drive more aspirational career goals and outcomes. This modus operandi distinguishes tbC as an artist-run initiative, as opposed to an outreach project, community art program, school or social service.
Despite tbC’s dedicated arts focus, the common assumption that the model should support members’ artistic goals and general developmental needs persists. This assumption is arguably influenced by tbC’s youth demographic, regular local government funding and community location. It may also stem from the public’s understanding that community-based art is associated with cultural development practices that support both the emotional and aesthetic needs and desires of participants and communities. tbC artists acknowledge that educational, health and welfare benefits naturally emerge from the group’s collaborative arts practice. They also understand former Chief Executive Officer of the Australia Council for the Arts, Tony Grybowski’s (2017) argument that youth arts can play an essential role in building socially cohesive, healthy and inclusive communities. However, the central belief at tbC is that these qualities and benefits naturally emerge from artistic practice and don’t always need to be emphasised. Argentine writer and youth theatre director María Inés Falconi (2015) concurs, arguing that young people’s capacity to engage with art in a way that does not include an overt message, social service or lesson is underestimated and that instead of trying to develop and educate young people through creative projects, we should allow the aesthetic function of creativity to stand as an independent artistic practice and outcome.
A frequent sentiment expressed in the studio by tbC artists is that the focus on dedicated arts practice and aesthetic outcomes makes tbC different from other youth programming - even other youth arts projects. Artist members often state that they find the focus on their education, health and welfare ahead of their artistic talents and needs annoying. They argue that they prefer to focus on creative goals and activities with dedicated artistic intentions and outcomes. tbC artists also often talk in the studio about how focusing on formal education and personal development within youth arts practice can distance them from the artworld and their work from art. Rosie’s story demonstrates why tbC has actively built a youth arts model with a dedicated arts focus and why it distinguishes itself from outreach, formal education, community arts, and even other youth arts practices.
The youth sports model presents an excellent example of the positive balancing act that can be achieved between education, health and welfare programming and autonomous and dedicated practice. Instead of overstating the outreach goals of sports engagement, the youth sports model routinely focuses on attracting young people to physical activities, game playing, skills development and teamwork. Young people also engage with the community-based sports model for extended periods. Bishop’s two sons have been involved in community-based sports for more than fifteen years. They talk plainly about how focusing on the game, the team and the club are motivating forces behind their sustained participation. Bishop’s youngest son is sporty and artistic and often compares the many opportunities he has to engage in dedicated sports training with the limited opportunities he has to engage in dedicated arts training. tbC member Rohan has also commented on this. As a talented footballer, illustrator and street artist, Rohan often compares the unlimited opportunities he has to train as a footballer with the limited opportunities he has to train as an artist.
Participation in youth sports is typically driven by youth-led processes that allow young people to set the pace and intensity of the activity at the level they desire (Gilchrist and Wheaton, 2011; Dawes, Vest and Simpkins, 2014). Young sportspeople also have opportunities to lead and direct teams and clubs, with many taking on governance, coaching and umpiring roles alongside sports mentors. Bishop’s eldest son has taken on many of these professional training opportunities, building an early soccer coaching career at one of Melbourne’s national soccer clubs. Many young people (some as young as six years of age) are accessing dedicated and durational sports training that supports early professional practice and career pathways. This training extends young participants a sporting status well beyond their ascribed youth status.
tbC operates with similar autonomy, offers comparable professional training and builds a corresponding (artistic) status. The modest funding that sustains tbC’s practice is also secured based on this autonomy. Funders are drawn to the model’s high participation rate and sustained membership. Many funders reach out unprompted, inviting tbC to bring its youth arts model to their youth communities. These flexible funding partnerships support tbC’s youth-driven artistic goals and aspirations.
tbC focuses on young artists’ passion for artmaking, just like the community sports model focuses on the young sportsperson’s passion for sport. tbC views its youth arts model as just as significant a community asset as a youth sports model. Inspiring more community-based youth art studios is a key objective of tbC’s ongoing practice.