• This grant has really opened up opportunities and let us make connections with arts resources… resources that were out there, just waiting to be used.
  – Rose M. Thompson

Staff, students, and family members at the St. Louis Public Schools’ Carver Elementary 21st Century Community Learning Center celebrate the culmination of a ten-week program with Portfolio Art Gallery and Education Center. Students provided detailed information about how they developed their pottery, sculptures, and other products.

"Connections For Youth: A 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program" provides after-school and Saturday programs for 650 students in grades four through eight in the St. Louis Public Schools. Activities in the program’s seven community learning centers include after-school academic acceleration, enrichment and recreation; a Saturday academy focusing on science, math and technology; parent education and support programs; and professional development for program staff. The program has also availed itself of community arts resources.

The Center of Contemporary Arts (COCA), a non-profit community-based arts center, provides extensive subsidized outreach initiatives to select St. Louis Community Learning Centers. It provides in-school residencies, after-school workshops lasting eight to ten weeks (in mural painting, poster design, pottery and mixed media) and summer programs that include the arts and technology. Twice a week, students come to COCA or staff are sent to the Community Learning Center. Instruction, supplies and administrative costs are supported by the Community Learning Center grant.

Activities have included five in-school broadcasts at Clay Elementary School that highlighted significant changes, individuals and events that affect the students’ school community. Curriculum connections are made to social studies, math, art and language arts. Students have participated in a year-long residency and have been exposed to the technical aspects of videotaping, script-writing, investigative reporting and interviews, and on-camera and off-camera production.

Another COCA project, ARTS-tainment, provides a series of hands-on art projects, such as collages, montages, wall hangings, and dolls and villages, designed to promote language and thinking skills, social interaction and collective activity, concentration, self-expression, hand-eye coordination, balance and play. Introduction to dance, at Carver Elementary School, gives children the opportunity to explore different dance styles, techniques, vocabulary and history, and to discover the benefits of physical fitness, discipline, self-confidence, self-expression and teamwork. According to COCA staff, children in the program who have not had previous concentrated exposure in the arts learn a whole new way to look at the world around them. Students not only learn about the arts, but also learn more about themselves and their environment.
Another service provider for the Community Learning Centers is the Taproots School of the Arts, which centers on the book-making arts. Marking the first collaboration between the city’s Board of Education and Taproots, the Community Learning Center grant pays for Taproots staff to come into the schools as well as to bring students to Taproots. Printmaking, letterpress, papermaking, paper marbling and photography classes help students to weave image and word together through all their activities. No classes exceed 10 students in size.

Similarly, the Portfolio Gallery and Educational Center involves the Community Learning Centers’ participants in eight- to-ten-week workshops in mural painting, poster design, pottery, and mixed media. The Community Learning Center grant pays for instruction and supplies as well as administrative costs. As at Taproots, in some cases the children come to the facility, while in others staff are sent to the Community Learning Centers. The schools are also working with many other cultural organizations, such as the St. Louis Science Center and the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The St. Louis Public Schools is a proud member of the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education, as is the Columbia School, one of the seven Community Learning Centers in the "Connections for Youth" program.