Elementz
1640 Race Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Creative Futures Initiative
Grant Application:
Using Hip Hop cultural art forms, Elementz is expanding its existing work with young people to strategically expose and therefore expand the possibilities of young creatives of color through measured and intentional efforts involving creative skill-building, creative college and career exposures, academic support and social-emotional development in what is presently known as the Creative Futures Initiative, or CFI.
Objectives:
To address the issues of Exposure and Resourcing, Elementz Hip Hop Cultural Art Center has expanded our existing Creative Futures program into what we now call the Creative Futures Initiative (CFI). This initiative will work collaboratively with key cross sector partners to increase the number of black and brown creative youth who have access to and are successful in the creative workforce. The CFI will work to develop infrastructure that provides robust academic support, creative college and career exposure, mentoring, diverse representation, internships, and pathways to creative career opportunities for young creatives of color.
The success of the Creative Futures Initiative will depend on the ability to influence behaviors through education and access.
5 key measures of success:
Increase in exposure for students of color to the creative field, beginning in elementary school
Increase in creative college/career readiness for students of color
Effective and sustainable Collaborative Impact Partnerships (i.e, schools, colleges and universities, businesses)
Measurable increase in highly skilled creatives of color in post secondary institutions
Measurable increase in highly skilled creatives of color in creative fields
The long term objective is based on the theory of the Exposure Quotient; GQ+EQ=DQ=IQ. This theory, developed by Dr. Obadiah Williams, states that, on a long enough timeline, whatever a person is exposed to will lead to the things that they desire to learn more about and become proficient in. This combination of exposure and desire will inform that person's intelligence quotient, or IQ, in a given area.
With this theory at its core, the Creative Futures Initiative posits that if we are able to provide rich and consistent exposures to young black and brown creatives early enough, the result will be a measurable increase in the desire to emerge themselves and become experts in a chosen creative field.
Grant Evaluation Report:
Throughout the grant period, we worked to expand our Creative Futures Initiative which involved creating a more comprehensive approach to creative college/career exposures for black and brown youth and those from low SES backgrounds and neighborhoods. These developments included updated curriculum that uses pre and posts tests to evaluate the level of exposure and impact our Hip Hop centric artforms have on the students we serve, lesson plans specific to each offering (DJing, dance, graffiti, poetry/spoken word, music production) and creating an original Hip Hop Story written by the Elementz staff to connect the youth with the history and legacy of Hip Hop culture, a culture created by black and brown youth to combat societal decline and racial injustice.
All of our programmatic offerings included “Character Strengths” toward social-emotional development.
Using Hip Hop artforms, we were able to help students articulate and develop the necessary tools for life achievement such as grit, determination, goal-setting, self-awareness, and self-efficacy.
Throughout 2021, the Creative Futures Initiative was implemented as arts enrichment programming in 9 schools across Greater Cincinnati most of which are elementary/middle schools serving students from the urban core and those from low SES backgrounds.
The CFI reached an approximate number of 2,000 students in 2021.
The number of schools has grown to 15 schools in 2022 and will continue to grow.
Website:
http://www.elementz.org Amount: $25,000
Date: September 2021
