Court Youth Center
Working with adult artists and educators, youth, from 13-18, create lifelong learning opportunities in performing, visual, literary and culinary arts through education, leisure, and career development programs where the voices of our youth are heard, valued and celebrated.
Out of school time to include after school time, weekends, and summer programs. Programs range from a one-day arts-based workshop to long-term, year-round, programs in the four art forms--visual, performing, literary, and culinary arts. The Court Youth Center has become a hub for youth activities and community programs in Southern New Mexico.
The facility, the 49,000 sq. ft. historic WPA Court Jr. High School, complements the arts-based programs with a 500-seat theatre; classrooms; studio spaces in visual arts, digital arts, and dance; gallery/exhibition spaces; and a staging kitchen and demonstration kitchen for the culinary arts. The arts programs are lead by professional artists and AmeriCorps Artists who have experience in the arts or arts in education. A number of service-learning and social justice arts based projects are completed yearly with public art produced in the community venues.
Currently, a gardening project modeled after the WWII Victory Gardens is serving as a model for intergenerational and arts integration in environmental art and native plants and traditional Hispanic medicinal herbs.
CYC has received national, regional and local recognitions and awards including one of six exemplary after school programs in arts from the National Endowment for the Arts and the US Dept. of Education; a Coming Up Taller semifinalist from the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities and one of five outstanding programs from the New Mexico Community Foundation.
1993
Irene Oliver-Lewis