Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The Core Competencies for Youth Engagement through the Arts (CC4YEA) model seeks to develop a learning framework for the design and evaluation of arts-based youth engagement projects, by identifying key areas of inquiry and impact. The model is based on the 4 Pillars of Education originally outlined by the UNESCO Task Force on Education for the 21st Century: Learning to Know, Learning to Be, Learning to Do and Learning to Live Together. Core Competencies have been developed for each of these four pillars; examples include "Critical Consciousness", "Value Exploration", "Creative Expression" and "Empathy". Core Competencies can be understood as fundamental areas of knowledge, attitudes and/or skills that enable the achievement of particular goals. We propose the conceptualization of such competencies within the practice of youth engagement, to identify and discuss the key skills and attributes that arts-based engagement programs are seeking to nurture in participants. We hope to develop the CC4YEA model in such a way that it can enable systematic program planning and evaluation, in an effort to help further the expansion and legitimacy of arts-based youth engagement approaches. To this end we have begun to explore the articulation of specific indicators that seek to identify the measurable elements and/or identifiable changes related to each Core Competency. As this work progresses, these indicators can be used to inform program goals, benchmarks, evaluation techniques and tools, and other key work related to youth engagement policy and practice. In this storytelling session we will present the work to date on the CC4YEA model, by sharing understandings of the Core Competencies through real world stories and examples. We will also engage conference participants in an interactive session of reciprocal storytelling, to share expertise and experiences, and to explore and expand the CC4YEA model and its potential use in research and practice.