Klare Shaw

Arts nonprofits working with youth are often asked, “What impact does your program have on the youth you serve?” They respond that youth keep coming. They bring friends. They’re proud of what they create. Some even make careers in the arts. But how often can youth-serving arts organizations really make the case that it was their program that made a difference in life outcomes of their youth? Can a case be made on more than attendance figures and anecdotes? Since 2008, the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project (BYAEP) has been working on these very questions.

According to some, "the word twain has its origin in the Old English twegen, meaning two. The phrase never the twain shall meet was used by Rudyard Kipling, in his Barrack-room ballads, 1892: 'Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.'" Kipling uses a colonial lens to bemoan the lack of commonality and accord between the British and the indigenous East Indian. Until my recent trip to New Mexico I often felt that same lack of accord between arts funders and education funders.

On May 15 and 16, 2002, more than 100 funders, artists, academicians, arts administrators, and community arts practitioners gathered in New Haven, Connecticut. We were there to participate in a convening organized by New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) entitled, "RE/New England: Investigating Community Building through Culture." The Open Society Institute and the Pitney Bowes Foundation provided funding for the conference. Participants came from thirteen states and the District of Columbia.