The National Guild for Community Arts Education, on behalf of a coalition of national partners, has been awarded an NEA Art Works grant for $100,000. The award will support a collective impact initiative and the creation of the first-ever blueprint to advance creative youth development (CYD).
The funds are part of more than $82 million granted in the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2016. “The arts are all around us, enhancing our lives in ways both subtle and obvious, expected and unexpected,” said NEA chairman Jane Chu. “Supporting projects like the one from the National Guild for Community Arts Education and its CYD partners offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”
Creative youth development is a new term that brings together a longstanding community of practice that intentionally integrates the arts, humanities, and sciences with youth development principles, sparking young people’s creativity and building critical learning and life skills. Representatives of the field met in 2014 to form its first-ever national policy agenda and charged a national partnership to oversee implementation. Current partners include the National Guild (which serves as a backbone organization), Americans for the Arts, the President’s Committee for the Arts and the Humanities, and Mass Cultural Council. The blueprint project will engage additional cross-sector organizations, cultivating partners from the youth development field.