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Putting The ‘Sparc’ Into Richmond

Kiran Heffner | February 12, 2020

Topics: Brendan Kennedy, LGBTQ youth, Richmond youth, Ryan Ripperton, School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community, SPARC

Richmond non-profit organization SPARC uses art, music, and performance to help local youth, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds, grow into creative, successful adults.

Every child is different. They have different backgrounds, different family situations, and a different story to tell the world, good or bad. Some are in need of a safe space that school cannot provide for them. This is where Richmond-based organization SPARC (School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community) makes its mark.

SPARC is a non-profit organization that helps children express their emotions and life challenges in a healthy environment through art programs. What makes SPARC perfect for a city like Richmond is that it gives children an outlet to express their emotions and creativity through art programs, allowing those children the opportunity to grow and add to the artistic community that makes Richmond the creative city it is.

“We really define our purpose as social and emotional learning through the arts,” said Ryan Ripperton, the Executive Director of SPARC. The difficult aspects of being a teenager — overwhelming emotions, not knowing how to explain the things you’re feeling, that persistent fear that no one understands — are what makes SPARC programs so important to these kids. SPARC successfully creates an environment that shows kids and teenagers how to express themselves and handle their emotions through the arts.

Photo via SPARC/Facebook

SPARC offers multiple opportunities for students to get involved, no matter their age or level in school. The “Stages” program, which works with the youngest students, offers kids the opportunity to enhance their language skills — to speak with confidence, pride, and clarity. 

“We send teachers into Richmond City schools, typically in the 2nd or 3rd grade, where we meet with those classes all year long,” says Brendan Kennedy, SPARC’s Program Director and “Captain of Curiosity.” “The idea of this program is to get into schools, again, that don’t typically have access to after-school activities.” With the help of these classes, SPARC says on their website, “program assessments show the average student improves oral language standards of learning by more than 44% within a single school year.”    

While “Stages” is geared toward a younger audience, “New Voices” is an intensive two-week program focused on high school students who want to try their hands at playwriting and having their plays performed.

“It is harnessing new playwrights’ plays and giving them an opportunity to work with a professional playwright and director to then see their work go from just their idea to an [actual] production,” Kennedy says. The students in the New Voices program live in VCU dorms during the two-week program, submitting their pieces and shepherding them through an in-depth process of read-throughs, rewrites, and performances.

“For those two weeks, they are living and breathing their play, and playwriting in general,” says Kennedy. “A play’s whole purpose is to be read in front of an audience, to perform in front of an audience … They get both sides of it… the revision and editing with professional playwrights and their peers, who are also working on their artwork.” 

Photo by Tom Topinka, via SPARC/Facebook

One of the most inclusive programs offered by Sparc is the “Spectrum” program. This program is offered to LGBTQ students to give them a safe and welcoming space to express their life experiences.

“[Spectrum] is completely focused on the LGBTQ student identity, and allies…of LGBTQ youth,” Ripperton explains. “[It] is all about the exploration and creation of identity and story and the acceptance of young people.” With the help of trained teachers, participation in different kinds of classes and exercises help students learn how to express and work through their life’s challenges in a creative and safe space.

To help protect their students, Ripperton says, SPARC follows a nationwide program created for Spectrum. “It’s all about creating that sense of belonging,” he says. “It’s advanced by a like group, like the Pride Youth Theater Alliance.”

Giving these kids a sense of safety and acceptance to express themselves is crucial to this program. Some of them endure bullying, family members not accepting them, or worse. Having the opportunity to participate in Spectrum provides helps make up for the love that they might lack in other parts of their lives.

“Talking about yourself, or talking about observations about the world, through an LGBTQ lens –for teenagers, that can be very vulnerable,” Ripperton explains. “So…we have recognized that everybody is going to have valuable things to say, and we’re going to honor all of it.” This way, SPARC helps to show these kids that they are talented, and that they can live in a world that will accept them for who they are.

Photo via SPARC/Facebook

Even though at this time, SPARC’s programs are mainly available in Richmond and Henrico, children in neighborhoods all over the state can benefit from these programs, which have strong potential to expand outside of these two areas. In fact, SPARC’s activities could be available to children elsewhere in the state as soon as this summer.

“We are very much in Richmond and Henrico primarily right now,” Ripperton says. “We’re planning on announcing a couple of weeks of summer programing that’s gonna be taking place down in Brandermill … and we have definitely been hearing the cry, especially from Chesterfield, so… we are definitely interested in growing.”

The expansion of SPARC to these new areas will open doors to a new generation of SPARC student, reaching students who don’t currently have access to the transportation needed to bring them to SPARC’s current facilities. SPARC also offers scholarships and reduced prices, so families from lower-income areas can afford them, and their kids can take advantage of an opportunity to grow and develop into the best they can be.

While their students may not stick with music or art in the long term, the skills taught by SPARC are skills kids will take with them throughout life. “You know, when I talk to a SPARC alum who is now a teacher — or is a community leader, or a politician, or a doctor, or whatever their chosen career — they’re not saying… I’m so glad that you taught me how to sing an F sharp correctly,” Ripperton says. “What they say is, ‘I’m really glad that you taught me to be confident and comfortable with who I am, how to talk in front of people… and how to be… organized and have compassion and empathy for other people.”

Ripperton points out that the skills kids learn with SPARC stick with them regardless of the path they end up taking. “No matter whether a person decides to pursue the arts as a career or not,” he says, “the difference we feel like we make in the community is around the social emotional learning for young people, that’s going to benefit them forever.” SPARC is not just teaching kids to act; they’re building character and giving kids the tools they need to succeed in life.

Photo via SPARC/Facebook

Regardless of income, social class, or what side of the city someone comes from, they are welcomed at SPARC. “It crosses boundaries,” Ripperton explains. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s an affluent family in the West End [that] is signing up for a class, or if it’s work we’re doing in schools [in the] South Side… No matter what it is, these are skills that every single young person needs. We can use the arts as a tool to help teach it.”      

SPARC is determined to give every child in the Richmond and Henrico area the opportunity to bring their creativity to life and express themselves in a safe environment. SPARC helps kids take the emotions they are feeling and process them through expression. They might not realize it at the time, but these lessons provide kids with tools that help them deal with life’s challenges.

“The tie that binds them all together is the idea that the arts can do more than teach you how to be a good artist,” says Ripperton. “That’s our reason for being here.”

Top Photo: Katrina Boone, Gianna Grace Photography, via SPARC/Facebook

The Art Of Richmond’s Youth

Alicen Hackney | June 6, 2019

Topics: Art 180, Elkhardt-Thompson Middle School, First Fridays, juvenile justice system, Really Big Show, Richmond youth

Art 180’s annual Really Big Show will turn art by the river city’s young people into a celebratory block party on First Friday.

Art 180 will be hosting their 15th annual Really Big Show this Friday, June 7th, as part of June’s First Friday festivities. The beloved non-profit will be taking up their entire block in Jackson Ward to display and present a semester’s worth of colorful creative works by Richmond’s youth.

“Having 183 of our program participants come together in one space is pretty exciting,” said Community Program Manager Vaughn Garland. “This is a moment in which we’re not only showcasing our youth’s work, but we’re also pulling people together… We’ll be able to get the youth up onstage in front of a crowd to ask them questions, and have them tell the community about their art, and, oh, they will tell definitely tell you.”

During the event there will be lots of art to see and plenty of activities to enjoy, as well as the staged presentations of each students artwork. There will be displays both inside and outside of the Art 180 building, with more permanent installations housed inside and various student projects outside, coupled with activities centered around those project topics.

“[With] one group, we had worked on weaving with natural materials, so there will be a station set up with something that will give people a chance to experience what that looks like,” said Program Director Taekia Glass.

Each semester, the focus of the classes changes, depending on the artists who are available to teach. As artists come to Art 180 to volunteer their time and serve as program assistants and leaders, they bring with them their own talents and specialties, so during different semesters there may be visual artists, musicians, or performance artists — but there’s always something new for the students to learn about.

For Garland, the volunteers who show up year after year for Art 180’s students demonstrate the best of what Richmond has to offer. “When push comes to shove we as a city always seem to help each other out,” said Garland. “When questioned if something is going to work, the city has a philosophy that, ‘yes, it will always work.’”

This year at the Really Big Show, a class called “Cut, Copy, Paste: Assembling Identity” will be presenting collages and other works that focus on the recognition of self identity through different mediums and experiences. Program Leader Raven Mata and Program Assistant Maurice Singleton created a space at Elkhardt-Thompson Middle School where kids can let their minds run wild and learn to safely express themselves and develop their identities in a creative setting.

For Mata, creating this space was a way to reach out to Richmond youth who might be in the same position she once was herself. “When I was growing up I had problems of not having a lot of people around to help me or my community, and seeing people forget about the kids in my community. When I finally got a chance to go to college, I realized ‘wow, I can be an artist. I didn’t know artists looked like me,’” said Mata. “While you’re out here working on galleries and sets, it’s one thing, but I felt like I needed to do more for my community. I just needed to give it back to the kids around me.”

For Singleton, it was about replicating a mentoring experience he had as a child for the next generation. “When I was a kid my mom put me in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program,” said Singleton. “It opened my horizons. My ‘Big Brother’ changed my life and I learned a lot from him, so I’d love to do that in return to whoever I meet.”

Aside from the work these artists join with Art 180 to do in the middle and high school setting, they are also involved in teaching at the local juvenile detention centers. Mata and Singleton both have worked with students in these settings and couldn’t be happier that they chose to do this.

“You’re in the detention center with all these ‘grown men’ who are actually young kids, and kids at heart. The kids lose faith — they’re in the system, and they don’t see a way out,” said Singleton. “Being someone who was incarcerated and got back out and had to start over, it was one of those things that stood out. Sitting in a cell thinking, ‘I don’t know what tomorrow will look like,’ and ‘I don’t think I have a future,’ and then to be able to get out of that and come back to show those kids I was in the same situation, got my mind right and got to move past that.”

“The idea that people have of the kids in the detention centers being these bad kids is wrong,” said Mata. “There really isn’t much of a difference, they’re all loud and have something to say, but they’re all great kids who just want to have someone look out for them and talk to them. It’s about being able to go into these spaces and showing these majority black and brown kids that artists can look like them and there’s nothing stopping them from doing what they want to do and exploring those concepts.”

Students from the “Cut, Copy, Paste: Assembling Identity” class will be presenting works with a wide range of influence at the Really Big Show. Some students have focused their projects on their dreams of their future careers as bakers, astronauts, and celebrities, while others have used their work to express what it means to them to be a woman in the modern world, or how important it is to protect our planet.

Through this work, these students have learned that they can express themselves in safe ways that can influence others, and that even when things don’t go to plan, you can always find a new road to get where you want to go.

“The reformative nature of art is what we’re all about,” said Mata. “Giving kids some control at a time in their lives where this might be their only avenue of control. Their art can give them the power of self esteem, and they love it — regardless of the mess-ups and challenges.”

This is what the Art 180 program is all about — showing marginalized kids that they matter and that they can be a positive force in society through creative self expression.

“We start with 4th graders, give them a creative and safe space. And then they can join us in middle school and stick around through high school,” said Garland. “We see them for 10 years. In that way we can officially measure what it means to actually change direction 180 degrees. Even though we see change happen in 10 months, 10 years has a really clear marking point for change.”

“To me, Art 180 means family,” said Glass.

Come out to the streets surrounding the Atlas Gallery at 114 W. Marshall Street this Friday, June 7th, from 4 to 9 PM and experience the heartbeat of Richmond’s creative youth at work, and learn more about Art 180’s amazing work in the community. For more info, click here.

Photos courtesy Art 180

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