Mission and Philosophy
Artbarn is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) community theater arts program for children and youth from pre-school through high school. Artbarn provides a warm and creative after-school program where children and youth of all backgrounds can make friends, experience a creative process, and learn skills that they can use for the rest of their lives.
Students at every age level are active participants in all aspects of the production experience. They perform on-stage acting, singing and dancing, and also work behind-the-scenes on script ideas, writing, scenery, costume design and publicity. High school internships allow older students to earn community service hours while they gain valuable job experience teaching theater arts. Student interns provide wonderful role models and mentors for the younger children.
Artbarn's mission is to support students working together in the performing arts and foster creativity, self-esteem and social confidence.
The Artbarn program offers a unique integration of theater arts training and social skills development. Artbarn stands apart as a performing arts program whose primary goal is to nurture creativity, social confidence and each child’s sense of self within a group. Students can try on different roles, reinvent themselves and develop empathy for other people by “walking in their shoes.” When children take risks to perform in front of an audience, they learn and grow. Their own sense of accomplishment — plus the public acknowledgment they receive — will empower them in other aspects of their lives.
Attention to the student’s experience throughout the production process is a primary concern. Establishing a culture of collaboration within each production troupe is the preliminary task. Once students feel safe and supported, the program fosters public speaking skills and helps children learn how to brainstorm and think “outside the box.” It also gives them practice following a timeline over the course of planning each production sequence.
Shirley Brice Heath is a linguistic anthropologist and expert on the impact of out-of-school programs on youth. Heath’s findings suggest that, of the school programs showing the greatest positive impact on youth, the key is heavy participation of the youth as artists and as organizational players. According to Heath:
Young people in arts-based organizations gain practice in thinking and talking as adults. They play important roles in their organizations; they have control over centering themselves and working for group excellence in achievement.
Artbarn’s continuing mission is to work effectively to offer these tangible benefits to our most important resource for the future: our children.
Shirley Brice Heath is the Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature at Stanford University and Senior Affiliate Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Brice Heath, Shirley, with Adelma Roach, Imaginative Actuality: Learning in the Arts During the Nonschool Hours, Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning, The Arts Education Partnership and The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, 1999, page 26.