The Trachtenberg Office Attends Performing Arts Workshop at the Women’s Unit of the Clarksburg Correctional Facility

Naomi Bloch and Wil Gutierrez, representing Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg, attended a performing arts workshop at the women’s unit of the Clarksburg Correctional Facility on Tuesday, January 19th. The Workshop is part of Class Acts Arts’ Project Youth ArtReach, a program partially funded by Montgomery County Council grants. Many of the approximately 40 women in the facility are young teenage girls. Tuesday’s workshop was the last of a six-week program lead by renowned artists Cecilia Esquivel and Patricia Vergara from the group Cantare. Students worked in groups and in a supportive, non-judgmental environment in which to share feelings.

Project ArtReach promotes positive youth development by providing juvenile offenders in detention, corrections, and probation settings with arts programs taught by master artists to enhance youth's cognitive, linguistic, social, and civic development. As youth engage with a diverse group of professional artists, they acquire skills in visual, literary, and performing arts. By exploring themes of respect and values from other cultures, youth learn lessons in tolerance, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Programs like the one at the Clarksburg Correctional Facility also help each student's re-entry and become more productive members of society.

For more information about Class Acts Arts and Project Youth ArtReach, click here.
For more information about Cantare, click here.

Something Else Within...

"Wishes"

Wishes are like snowflakes
Falling in the winter
Each one different
Fragile, beautiful.
Touch it, and it disappears.

-S.J.

The above poem is found in Project Youth ArtReach’s most recent anthology of poetry entitled Something Else Within. The poems were written between 2003 and 2008 in Rockville by court-involved young people in workshops led by internationally-recognized Bulgarian poet, Lyubomir Nikolov. Writing within a supportive, non-judgmental environment in which to share feelings, these students in many cases learned to appreciate poetry for the first time.

Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg met with the director of Poject Youth ArtReach, Claire Schwadron, today to discuss future funding opportunities for the program.

Project Youth ArtReach (PYA) is a program of Class Act Arts, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit arts organization dedicated to bringing diverse arts experiences to schools and communities.

PYA facilitates visual, literacy and performing arts residencies and performances for youth in correctional facilities and probation management programs. These arts based experiences provide incarcerated and high risk youth with opportunities to achieve success.

To learn more about Class Act Arts, Inc. and Project ArtReach, click here.