Youth Arts Collective (YAC)

Mission

YAC’s mission is to inspire creativity, kindness and confidence in our local youth through artistic expression and mutual respect.

Our core values are to provide and promote creative opportunity, tolerance, education, diversity, self-expression, fun and respect. YAC’s vision is simple: Do Art. Be Kind.

The Big Idea

Youth Arts Collective is offering two community outreach programs: Reaching Across Generations that bridges the generations and Teaching Across Generations that bridges communities.

Reaching Across Generations –Pairs young artists ages 14-22 with elder artists and/or community activists, age 75 or older, bridging the generations. A YACster will interview an elder and create her/his portrait and their own self-portrait, answering the same interview questions. The portraits and interviews will be exhibited in the community and on social media, beginning in 2018. Each portrait will be given to the elder and their families. This will honor elders who have contributed to our community’s greater good, our cultural and artistic heritage. The YACsters will get to know wonderful elders and vice-versa.

Teaching Across Generations – YACsters along side the YAC mentors, teach project-based art to under-served youth, at the Seaside Village Project after-school program twice per month and at YAC two Saturday mornings per month.

These programs reflect YAC’s commitment to teaching the value of compassion, diversity, gratitude, and service.

If you ask me what YAC teaches, I would not say ‘art’. Through art, YAC teaches the values that make someone a responsible, creative, cooperative member of society, and, yes, a better artist. These are not skills to negotiate and succeed in the society in which we live, these are the skills to make society better. We learned these lessons in those studios, and we had a lot of fun along the way.
YAC Alum/YACster from 2002-2006
Awarded Regency Scholarship from UCLA
Los Angeles Artist/Author

— Khalid Hussein, Age 31, Los Angeles