Case study: AS220

Can the arts lower the recidivism rate for youth released from the Rhode Island Training School? Can workshops in drumming, cartooning, and video open new avenues of constructive self-expression for at-risk city kids? AS220 said, "Let's find out."

Project
Broad Street Studio

Why the Foundation invested
Rhode Island desperately needs more youth services...particularly in our cities, where the number of adolescents has reached an all-time high. In 2000, AS220 launched a pilot arts immersion program to work with youth transitioning back to the community from the Rhode Island Training School. The goal: to see if the arts could raise self-esteem, improve grades and behavior, and maybe change some lives in the process. Is it working? The state thinks so. In 2002, the Department of Children, Youth and Families, together with the Department of Health, picked up a significant portion the program's funding.

Background
In 2001, a Providence community arts center, AS220, opened its second location, Broad Street Studio, to welcome "a steady stream of new voices...especially...voices that might not be heard elsewhere, including those of at-risk youth."

Among the activities at the Broad Street Studio: an afterschool arts immersion program for youth just released from the Rhode Island Training School, the state's juvenile detention and correctional facility.

Five afternoons a week, professional artists conduct workshops in everything from mural painting to Afro-Caribbean drumming to photography. The arts immersion program challenges kids to try something new and potentially life-changing, in a safe and accepting environment. All workshops are free (though not cheap: the Broad Street Studio's annual budget is over $200,000).

Founded as a non-juried exhibit space by artists in 1985, AS220 has a long history of welcoming youth into its programs and facilities. Which is one reason why, in 1998, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Program for Exemplary Community Arts Centers picked AS220 to receive a multi-year $325,000 grant. Among the grant's goals: to help AS220 broaden its outreach to high school youth.

The immersion program is part of that outreach. Other outreach activities for youth include: The Muzine, an uncensored magazine of student writing; monthly youth performances and hip hop workshops; a half dozen arts exhibits by youth each year; and new income-producing activities like a CD recording label, a photo portrait studio, and a steel-drum orchestra for hire.

Case study: Rhode Island College

Each year since 1998, more than 13,000 East Bay elementary school students have learned to "think like scientists," thanks to KITES, a revolutionary new approach to science and math education.

Project
Kits in Teaching Elementary Science (KITES)

Why the Foundation invested
Innovation happens all the time in individual classrooms. This, though, was a rare chance: to introduce the country's most innovative math and science curricula quickly into hundreds of classrooms. In just three years, the KITES program revamped the teaching of elementary science and math throughout the East Bay area.

Background
By 1996 the debate about how to reform science education in U.S. elementary and middle schools had gone national, becoming front-page news in the New York Times. From that debate came KITES. KITES trains elementary school teachers to put away their lecture notes and adopt "inquiry-based" education instead.

Inquiry-based education mirrors how real scientists work. Students K-6 pose questions and then seek answers, conducting real experiments, using "kits" developed by experts. Inquiry-based learning encourages curiosity, deepens understanding, and builds confidence. Students gain a hands-on, working knowledge of principles in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and more. Just as important, teachers are well trained to overcome their own math and science phobias.

Over a three-year period Rhode Island College, in partnership with the East Bay Educational Collaborative, trained all 600 elementary teachers in eight East Bay school districts to use KITES. Many teachers found KITES a revelation. A Tiverton third-grade teacher's experience was typical: "This year my children cannot get enough science."

KITES was a large-scale collaborative effort. Endorsed and supported by a $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the East Bay KITES project in total cost $5.7 million. Rhode Island College, participating school districts, and local corporations contributed heavily. The Rhode Island Foundation grant went to purchase additional science kits.