IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD : Downtown: Bringing Out the Artist in Inner-City Youth

Downtown is home to some of Los Angeles’ premiere arts venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It is also home to thousands of the city’s poorest students, many of whom are newly arrived Latino immigrants. Helping link the worlds is Inner-City Arts, a nonprofit art center. Founded in 1989 with funds from grants, foundations and businesses, ICA provides bilingual arts education for about 2,000 elementary school pupils who live in the gritty industrial area that stretches roughly from Macy to Hope streets to Jefferson Boulevard to the San Ana Freeway. ICA uses the arts to bridge cultural and language gaps for children from four schools. It is the only full-fledged privately funded arts curriculum to operate within the Los Angeles Unified School District during the school day. A small after-school program is also offered at no charge.

HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS

Third- through sixth-graders meet at ICA studios twice a week for six weeks for their only art instruction of the year outside their classroom. They are bused by LAUSD to the center’s temporary Towne Avenue site, where they study painting and ceramics. Music and performing arts will be added in late spring when ICA opens its new 16,000-square-foot building on nearby Kohler Street, purchased with a $600,000 grant from the Mark Taper Foundation.

For the first part of each session, artists introduce basic concepts such as foreground and background and explain the difference between mediums such as oil versus watercolor. A language teacher helps students to explain their work. The goal is to build vocabulary, leading to sentence development and increased oral and writing skills.

SUCCESSES

The Business Committee in the Arts a New York-based corporate arts group, and Forbes magazine honored ICA in 1992 and 1993 for innovation in developing small business/arts partnerships. Among them was a novel plan that let 10 small companies guarantee $50,000 of a $500,000 bank loan to allow renovation to begin on the Mark Taper Center/Inner-City Arts building at 720 Kohler St. while fund raising continues.

A TEACHER’S VIEW

SHARON DEBRIERE

Longtime Ninth Street School educator; involved with ICA since its inception, now an ICA board member

This is no hokey art project. Some of these students have severe emotional problems. This program gives them a positive experience and shows how they can work with one another.

A child learns his creation is unique, which bolsters self-esteem. The child learns how to express his inner feelings when explaining what he did. The child also speaks in front of his peers and learns to accept criticism. I then let the student go to the computer and write about his creative venture. I am able to take the child from the abstract into the academic field. For English as a Second Language students, the process of the bilingual ICA program is especially important.

I also take part and draw. It gives me a new perspective. I tie in math by asking students to think how far away an object in the background of their picture may be. It can also help with science. A student draws a leaf and you can introduce other leaves and the differences between them.

A BACKER’S PERSPECTIVE

BOB SHEARIN

ICA board member and supporter since late 1990; co-owner of Sharon Anthony, a clothing manufacturer based in Gardena that has made a $100,000 commitment to the program

I watched a group of 9- and 10-year-old boys. They were so excited, so proud of their sculptures and what they accomplished. You could see them make a connection between soul, brain and hands. It was such a constructive way of expression. I thought, “That’s the key to getting them not to do graffiti or beat each other up.” Teachers also tell us that it gives them a better attention span.

In business, when you have problems with a product, you go back to the inception to see what went wrong. To deal with the problems around us, we have to focus on children. We have this wonderful raw material--there’s not a lot of evil 5 year olds. Yet something happens in the process that we end up with a product that we often have to warehouse in jail or some welfare program. ICA is an innovative attempt to give these little kids the tools to deal creatively with the world around them.

Great societies are not measured by their armies or engineers; they’re measured by their artists. There’s a reason for that: The highest and best self comes out there.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Population

Area served by Inner-City Arts: 54,535

Los Angeles: 3,485,398

Population by Race and Ethnicity

Area served by Inner-City Arts:

White: 11%

Hispanic: 65%

Black: 16%

Asian: 7%

Other: 1%

City of Los Angeles

White: 37%

Hispanic: 40%

Black: 13%

Asian: 9%

Other: 1%

Source: U.S. Census; figures are rounded.

TO GET INVOLVED

For information about donation, support or volunteer opportunities with Inner-City Arts, call Director of Development Rega Petlin at (213) 627-9621.