ARTISTIC VISION

AFCY’s vision is collectively developed in a participatory process that includes program participants, AFCY’s Youth Advisory Council, key community and education partners, artists, and AFCY staff and board. AFCY fully recognizes the importance and involvement of young people as program supporters and designers, along with other key community and education partners.

AFCY’s artistic vision positions the artistic contributions of marginalized young people as an effective and meaningful way of increasing their chances of educational and personal success, and building a sense of community. We believe that arts programs generate creative results and processes that can translate into meaningful learning opportunities and activate consciousness-raising and social action. Arts programs enable young people to develop skill, gain knowledge and gives them the opportunity to self-express. As well, arts educational activity can offer youth points of reentry into participation in their own community. AFCY believes that hands-on activity centred on critical inquiry, exploration and participation allows young people to discover, create and engage in memorable and sustainable experiences. These explorations can lead young people to discover new directions and social frameworks from which to publicly launch their ideas and priorities. Built into our programs are opportunities for the participants to use their artistic experiences to engender public involvement and to contribute to their own neighbourhood as artists. As a result of this exposure, public attitudes towards youth can shift so that they can be seen as leaders, doers and inspirers.

Children and youth who are creatively engaged in AFCY programs are introduced to using the arts as a way of giving back to society. As well as being intrinsically valuable and important, the arts act as a vehicle through which young people can discover their potential, the roots of their beliefs, values and dreams, and as well offers a place from which future directions can be realized.

AFCY is committed to the belief that art is fundamental to education and life. Creativity is an expression of the imagination, and it is our imagination that allows us to see possibilities. Engaging in the arts is an empowering activity. It can be positive and constructive, when creative experiences are guided by the qualities of relevance, communality and respect. When people create they make choices. Having the ability to make choices, in art and life, gives young people a sense of self-control and self-actualization. AFCY’s programs rest on the choices made by marginalized children, youth and their communities. We believe that the choices made within our programming framework and under the guidance of masterful artist/instructors have the capacity to position marginalized youth to engage in a constructive dialogue with the mainstream.

AFCY’s programming features themes that reflect the interests and priorities of our participants and the audiences we serve. Through evaluative means, AFCY gathers comments, suggestions and ideas that come directly from our participants and through comment books and graffiti walls installed at AFCY program performances and events. AFCY adopts this information and applies it to our programs. Many of our programs reflect place-based notions where the participants and the communal audiences engage in workshops that focus on exploring, discovering and celebrating their immediate surroundings. As well, many of our programs focus on cultural themes that respond to the participants and the audiences’ heritages and cultural stories.