Kids’ Creative Side Is Nurtured

Deep in downtown Los Angeles’ skid row, where hundreds of homeless people sleep on the streets, is a most unexpected oasis with a most unexpected purpose: to nurture inner-city schoolchildren’s creativity.

It’s called Inner-City Arts.

Within the tall barbed-wire fence lies a tranquil palm-shaded courtyard that anchors a complex of light-filled modern studios. The rooms come alive on weekdays with students bused in from 22 schools for sessions in visual and performing arts, including dance, music, painting, ceramics and animation.

On a recent morning, two dozen third-graders from Tenth Street School painted self-portraits. They peered into small round cosmetic mirrors above each of their canvases so they could see themselves and the proportions of their features as they painted.

Among the most intent was Erik M., who was vigorously putting the final touches on a Picasso-like rendition of himself, with his black hair arranged in soft spikes, his face outlined in yellow and a big red mouth.

In other rooms, students were making clay masks, creating animated films, putting together a concert with makeshift instruments and performing a Polynesian dance.

The Inner-City Arts program recently received a $20,000 grant from the 2005 Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which raises money for nonprofit groups serving disadvantaged children and youths in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

The nonprofit Inner-City Arts program has provided arts education to about 100,000 students since its start in 1989. For most of the students, it is the only arts education they will get, because the Los Angeles Unified School District eliminated most funding for the arts in the late 1970s.

Not long after, artist Bob Bates, a painter and sculptor who often worked with kids, said he heard “a voice from God” saying he must start an arts space for children. He initially tried to deny the directive, he said, but so many extraordinary things happened that he couldn’t shake what he felt was a clear message.

A few years later, he found the backing for the project when he met businessman Irwin Jaeger. They started the program in a loft on Olympic Street, where Bates taught 450 students from the Ninth Street School who went to one class a week.

Today, the nonprofit center runs on an annual budget of $1.5 million and about 8,000 children attend the twice-a-week, 1 1/2 -hour sessions that run for seven to 10 weeks.

Most of the children’s families fall below the poverty line. Some are homeless.

The program’s goal goes beyond instruction in drawing and painting. It also helps the students, most of whom speak Spanish at home, with their English-language skills. A recent Department of Education-sponsored study cited by Inner-City Arts showed that children and teachers who actively participated in the program scored nearly 18% higher in reading, 8.3% higher in language arts and 25% higher in mathematics than those who had not.

“When the children create something, they want to have the language to talk about it and write about it,” said Jan Hirsch, the program’s professional development director.

Typically, she added, a child who can’t focus in the classroom comes alive in the arts program, which taps into a creative side often neglected in classrooms focused on standardized tests.

When such students start seeing that they have talent in something, the self-confidence often carries over to improving their performance in the classroom, Hirsch says.

The center also offers professional development sessions on Saturdays to show teachers how to better incorporate the arts into their daily classroom activities.

Inner-City Arts continues to grow. It has raised about $7.5 million of its $10-million goal in a capital campaign that will add a theater and a number of other projects.

For Bates, the extent of the program has gone way beyond the little studio he once envisioned.

Bates said “the greatest result” has been “seeing and verifying the power and importance of creativity.”

The program isn’t about training future artists, he notes, but about “encouraging the children to be more creative and fearless in the way they live their lives--to live their lives with courage and hope and recognition that they are unique and have unbelievable power to accomplish anything they want.”

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Money raised last year has provided $1.4 million to help children in need in 2005.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $500,000 in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/holidaycampaign.

To send checks, use the attached coupon. Please do not send cash.

Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.

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