“Art is a way to teach them certain disciplines about meeting deadlines, how to create a project and how to go step-by-step to anything you want to do in life,” says North Little Rock Alderman Maurice Taylor, whose desire to help teens learn how to succeed in life led to the creation of Art Connection in 2012.
A nonprofit after-school art and entrepreneurial program, Art Connection not only teaches teenagers to be artists, but employs them while they learn. The program is modeled after Artists for Humanity in Boston that was founded in 1995 to teach teens self-sufficiency and encourage them to go to college by giving them jobs in the arts. Art Connection, funded through an $85,000 private donation that the city of North Little Rock matched as well as small arts grants, reaches out to “under-resourced” students who don’t participate in sports and other school programs.
See Wednesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more.