In light of today’s economy where everybody is cutting back, it seems that one of the things that has taken a hit has been the arts.  With No Child Left Behind, if it can’t be tested, it becomes a secondary priority.  With the work that Southwest Detroit’s Livings Arts is doing, they are bringing the arts to school children to enrich their lives, as well as to aid their education.

On the night of Wednesday, February 16^th, Living Arts held a community event, where they presented their work to the public at the Odd Fellows Building on 8701 W. Vernor in Southwest Detroit.  In front of a small group of supporters, school teachers and Living Arts staff, some of Living Arts young dancers put on a modern dance performance.

Alycia Meriweather, board president, succinctly summed up the event,  “We’d like to share what we’re doing in Southwest Detroit.”

Livings Arts started off as Southwest Dance in 1999.  At that time, they offered four weekly classes to 19 students.  From there, they diversified their offerings, though they still remained anchored in dance.  Then, in 2008, El Arte Alliance merged with Living Arts to become its arts education division.  In the successive 12 years, the merger allowed them to “strengthen their presence in Southwest Detroit and to serve more than 1,200 community members with quality arts and culture experiences.”

The bulk of the presentation was by Melanie Knoll, Livings Arts co-executive director.  In her presentation, she lay down the foundation of information to explain the necessity of their work.  Knoll explained how while it takes about $46,000 to incarcerate a youth, it takes about $200 to engage that same youth for one program year.

“One of our aims is to inspire the youth to get a vision of life and purpose,” she explained.

While, at first, I thought this had to do with teaching art as the sole objective, I learned that it has other applications.  I was also able to see a video presentation where I saw elementary age children using physical movement to aid their learning English.  Teacher, Ann Solomon, spoke about its application for students learning English.

“El Arte is a marriage between academic and artistic disciplines.  It helps with language acquisition for English learners,” she said.  “Within weeks, they jumped one grade [for example, C to B].  We, also, saw higher attendance and test scores went up.”

Living Arts continues to do some great work in using dance and the arts to aid school children learning, improving discipline and helping to provide them with more fruitful alternatives.  For those that would like to know more about Living Arts or to find out how they might be able to help, they can visit their site at http://www.livingartsdetroit.org/ or call them at (313) 841-4765.

Author: José A. Rodríguez