National Youth Arts Week is an opportunity for communities across Canada to rally together to celebrate our amazing youth – their energy, their creativity, and their innovative spirits.  While young people themselves will be taking the lead in planning and executing their own projects, there are many ways that other groups can support and promote National Youth Arts Week.  

Download our Community Package (pdf) for more information and click on the links below for ideas on how your group can be involved…

Artists and Arts Organizations
Businesses
Colleges and Universities
Community Centres
First Nations Communities
High schools and middle schools
Libraries and Museums
Municipalities
Parents and  Adult Allies
Service Clubs (Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions Club, etc.)
Youth

 

 

 

Artists and Arts Organizations

Create an ad-hoc Youth Arts Council within your organization to support and engage youth to participate in National Youth Arts Week May 1 - 7.  Support youth that are interested in planning events in your community by offering office space, event insurance, or to flow funding through your organizations bank account.  Facilitate a youth-led project happening out of your organization, such as an instrument ‘petting zoo’ or a youth-only performance or exhibition.  Host art workshops for youth at schools, in libraries, at museums, or even in public outdoor spaces like parks or town squares!   

 

Businesses

Donate money and in-kind materials required for National Youth Arts Week projects.  Help promote National Youth Arts Week events in the communities by sponsoring the printing of posters and publicity materials.  Put up posters promoting events your windows and display event information in your business.  Allow youth artists and musicians to put up art or play music in your storefront.  Encourage events to happen in the downtown or an indentified Business Improvment Area.

 

Colleges and Universities

Incorporate an end of term student exhibition or performance into National Youth Arts Week May 1 -7.  Encourage youth-led arts project into a year-end performance or exhibition that can be toured throughout the community. Distribute information around schools about National Youth Arts Week and encourage students and student groups to plan communal events like open mic nights, spoken word slams, jazz nights or performance art.  Provide venue space in theatres, cafeterias, and classrooms for free for youth groups planning events, arts workshops, or performing events.  

 

Community and Youth Centres

Distribute information to youth accessing your space, and encourage them to plan events.  Hold a brainstorming session with interested youth and help kick-start some idea creation around potential projects they can run.  Have a youth worker act as an adult ally that youth can go to for questions and advice.  Provide venue space for youth to gather to plan and execute their visions, and provide support where needed. 

 

First Nations Communities

Identify community youth leaders to help mobilize more youth to co-create events for National Youth Arts Week.  Organize events celebrating cultural traditions such as, dancing, drum-making or learning around how herbs and plants were traditionally used for food and medicinal purposes.  Encourage cross-cultural and reconciliation events;  plan hip hop or break-dancing competitions or open mic nights featuring story-telling, poetry and original music.  Create a community mural that tells the history of your community or explores a pressing social issue.

 

High schools and middle schools

Identify youth leaders and youth artists and encourage them to organize events for National Youth Arts Week.  Invite youth to make school announcements and presentations about their projects.   Encourage woodworking, visual art, music, cooking, new media and civics classes to plan end of the year community events like film festivals, art shows, and performances.   Unveil a collaborative woodworking project or host a culinary competition.  Incorporate workshops around spectacle arts such as mask-making, puppet-making or lantern-making which can then be part of a wider community event like a community parade.  Launch a new gardening project that involves the community.

 

Libraries and Museums

Make common rooms available for youth to use for National Youth Arts Week activities, or planning sessions.  Give youth access to your archive for the purpose of producing Heritage based arts projects.  Host a Human Library event where people ‘take out’ youth from the library and then are able listen to their stories.  Of course the youth or "book" is always welcome to reply “my book does not contain a chapter on that subject”!  

 

Municipalities

Hire a Community Coordinator and form a Youth Council to support them in identifying Youth Mobilizers to organize events in the community.  Pass resolutions to support National Youth Arts Week as a community.  Welcome installations of youth arts in municipal buildings and public spaces.  Set aside funding for youth artists to apply to for National Youth Arts Week projects.  Offer municipal venues for free to host National Youth Arts Week events.  

 

Parents and Adult Allies

Spread the word about National Youth Arts Week around your community – speak to your friends, colleagues, families – word of mouth is the best way to mobilize people!  Encourage your municipal leaders and community groups to take part in the ways listed here.  Support your children or other youth you know in planning their events by providing encouragement but stepping back and letting them take control.  Be there to answer questions, offer arts-based skill building, or give advice – but only when they ask for it!  Provide transportation to and from planning sessions, and events.   

 

Service Clubs (Rotary Club, Kiwanis, Lions Club, etc.)

Provide financial support to youth planning events in your local community.  Host information sessions about how youth can access your funding programs.  Encourage your youth members, or Key Club to attend and participate in youth-led events.

 

Youth

If you have a great idea, start planning!  Mobilize your friends and their friends and their friends’  friends…use our Toolkit to help figure out how to promote your event, ask for donations, and recruit volunteers.  Use our Toolkit to create a Youth Arts Collective to work together to create and plan events for National Youth Arts Week.  If you want to do something but aren’t sure what that might be, use our idea Toolkits to get ideas about events you can run and follow the simple steps to execute a project in your own community.  Events and projects don’t have to be huge, or even require an arts collective to plan: by yourself you can plan an informal painting, cooking, canning, crafting or jam session at your house or connect with other friends to host an open mic or creative writing night at a local restaurant.  Or if you want to go big, connect with friends and plan a week of artistic happenings around your community: yarn bombings, moss graffiti…get creative!