‘City Hearts’ Uses Arts to Introduce At-Risk Youths to New Possibilities

A year and a half ago, 12-year-old Nicole Jackson didn’t know much about William Shakespeare.

“I knew nothing except that two or three of his plays had been made into movies,” said the eighth-grader at Haydock Intermediate School in Oxnard.

Since starting a Shakespeare class offered by City Hearts: Kids Say Yes to the Arts, Nicole said she has found out a lot about life in the Elizabethan playwright’s time, including sword fighting.

The program’s drama, dance and photography classes give students opportunities that former juvenile defense attorney Sherry Jason wishes some of her clients had.

She and her husband, Bob, founded the program for at-risk youths in 1985. The next year, the first classes were held with 60 children enrolled. Today, more than 800 youths in Los Angeles and Ventura counties participate in classes taught by professional actors and artists.

“We offer an array of arts activities with the belief--and after all these years, the experience--that kids will find something that they will really feel passionate about,” Sherry Jason said.

The Holiday Campaign of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund raises money for organizations like City Hearts. These groups offer services such as teen parenting education and literacy programs; others combat gang violence, drugs and child abuse.

There are various City Hearts programs to accommodate different age groups and backgrounds.

The 12-week courses are held at the group’s professional studio and theater downtown or on-site at neighborhood organizations such as the Neighborhood Youth Assn. in Venice. Each course ends with a performance, or “celebration.”

Some of Shakespeare’s themes are easily understood by children, said Justin Doran.

The actor, who heads the Shakespeare classes taught in the Oxnard Unified School District, said the issues of the Capulets and the Montagues, the two warring families in “Romeo and Juliet,” “go hand in hand with the gang code of honor and resolution.”

Sabrina Moore, 13, of Oxnard said she noticed a difference in herself after taking the classes.

“You’re more hyper and active” after taking a drama class, she said. “It brings out a different side of me.”

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