VCC Magazine Winter 2019

V irginia C apitol C onnections , W inter 2019 20 Juvenile Justice: Witness it from Those Inside As the General Assembly convenes, legislators and staff can just take a short walk across Main Street from the Pocahontas Building to see a compelling and chilling art exhibit in the SunTrust lobby. The exhibit, presented by ART 180, depicts what it is like for a young person to be incarcerated. One can see, hear, and feel the experience through the articulate youth who are detained in our prison system. One senses the frustration, the confinement, the deferred dreams, of those who are there. ART 180, as the name suggests, is a growing organization that gives challenged young people the opportunity to turn their lives around—a 180-degree turn—through art. Students receive these programs free of charge. The idea was born 20 years ago out of a conversation between Marlene Paul and Kathleen Lane at Legend Brewing in Richmond. These “closet artists” channeled their advertising and communications backgrounds to come up with an exciting—some would say idealistic—plan to create a community art program for marginalized youth. Lane moved away in 2001, but Paul is still working hard as ART 180’s executive director. The idea clicked. In 1998 ART 180 became a 501(c) 3 organization and has had a multitude of community partners, many of them long-established organizations. It started at The Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club in Church Hill, quickly followed by Friends Association for Children in Gilpin. The list now includes, among others, Richmond Public Schools, Charterhouse School, Northstar Academy, St. Andrew’s School, and the juvenile detention facilities. Originally, ART 180 recruited and trained artists to go to the partners’ sites and present programs designed to inspire young people to express themselves through art. Six years ago, the organization was able to purchase its own space, in the old Atlas Baking Company building at 114 W. Marshall Street in Jackson Ward. To enter this creative space is to feast your eyes on artistic treasure: one sees stars, colors, welcoming signs, mobiles, posters, a totem pole. The work tables are lit by natural light streaming in from huge windows in red brick walls. The loft ceiling has fans, and a custom-made chandelier by artist Paul Teebles, one of ART 180’s past program leaders. There’s an African drum in one corner of the lounge, and a guitar in the other, available to the teens who visit the center for programs. The space almost begs you to pick up a paintbrush or a lump of clay. The current exhibit at SunTrust is one of many intriguing projects of the group. Taekia Glass, ART 180’s program director, with a previous career in architecture, described some of the very recent ones: Binford Middle School students were exposed to a deep study of four African American artists and then they created their own art in the style of those artists; St. Andrew’s students worked on natural sculptures, weaving baskets and other artworks and learning from a member of the Cherokee Nation; and Glass’s own project she led as a program leader before joining the staff, “Community Trees,” which expanded on the idea of a family tree: students built trees adorned with symbols of broader community influences, like mentors, athletic coaches, even a mail carrier, that go into creating the bigger concept of family. Paul and Glass emphasize that they want their audiences to view these young artists as “agents of change,” and not just people to be “served.” These students are self-advocates. They want compassion; they want listening. They need policies that support these messages about juvenile justice. They want legislation that supports education. They need funding for sustainability for the programs. They want more teens to benefit from the programs at their art center, which are not at capacity. They have many more teens and schools to serve. One of the most meaningful partners has been RISE for Youth, which branched off from Legal Aid Justice Center and has helped with the current exhibit at SunTrust and advocacy for ending the school- to-prison pipeline. That particular program is known as “Performing Statistics.” What do statistics have to do with art? The exhibit explains important numbers: the cost of incarceration compared to the cost of an education, the number of people incarcerated as young as kindergarten, the disproportionate percentage of minorities and youth with disabilities who are incarcerated, and the sobering fact that Virginia was first in the nation for sending students from the school system to the justice system. This is all data that is critical to understanding the message of the display. Artist Mark Strandquist conceived of the project and now serves as its creative director. As part of this project, young people in the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center visited the Jackson Ward studio three days a week throughout the summer, working with artists and legal experts to understand their potential influence on the system. What was intended as a one-time project in 2015 “took off,” according to Paul, received a big grant that year to make it a permanent program. The goal is not only to provide youth who are part of the system to share their experiences, but for the artwork they create (through mediums ranging from poetry to screenwriting to virtual reality) to be used to encourage legislators and other policymakers to make changes that will improve the outlook for youth. And legislators are taking notice. On a Sunday afternoon, legislators met with representatives from ART 180 and RISE for Youth in the beautiful studio space to answer the question: “What do young people need to fee safe and free?” The art exhibit itself helped to answer that question. What’s next for ART 180? They want to take the experience further. They ultimately want to reach all Richmond Public Schools middle schools, and to help transition those participants to programs at their Atlas center once they are in high school. They also want to help more young people successfully transition to adulthood, and to find ways for them to be involved in the organization as adults. Mostly, they want to reach more young people who would benefit from expressing themselves through art. For more information about ART 180, visit www.art180.org . V