MCS would like to express our special gratitude to Harbor Business Source client Tolteka Cuauhtin of Creative Hearts & Minds, who shares his important educational mission with us:
“We at Creative Hearts & Minds, are thankful for the Harbor Business Source, specifically Adrian Veliz and Melvin Rubio who have been of great assistance in helping our organization initiate our enrichment programming at schools in the City of Los Angeles. We are dedicated to arts enrichment, with a goal of helping transform our students, schools, and communities, for the better.
We have piloted our work at two sites, including Cesar Chavez Learning Academies High School in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, in conjunction with Educare and Beyond the Bell, where our The Poetic Justice program shows how poetry/spoken word/positive hip hop can be used as tool of critical thinking and youth empowerment, in helping students find and develop their own voices, as active participants in our community and world.
Within our first few weeks of programming, students already have a performance at California State University Northridge under their belt, as well as sharing at Tia Chucha’s, the Sylmar community bookstore owned by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez and his wife Trini.
In East Los Angeles, we are piloting our Culturally Relevant Theatre program at KIPP L.A. Prep, a middle school known for its high academic achievement, where we add an additional dimension of enrichment to their after school programming. There, students practice community and team building, interpersonal skills and the craft of theatre, while building their own self-esteem and confidence as young human beings, who do matter.
Our Culturally Relevant Theatre program connects not only to their own lives through the curriculum, but to the canon, both traditional Western, and intercultural, with culminating performances for their school and community – experiences which are designed to be transformational, life-changing for students.
Considerate of the state law, that all California k-12 students should have access to different visual and performing artforms in their educational program, a law that too often is not realized in practice at many schools, we are here to make a difference.
Our enrichment programs range from a few weeks to an entire school year, and we also offer live performances, interactive presentations, and workshops for the youth during single events – conducted by professional artists of multiple artistic modalities/disciplines, facilitating an experience that students may otherwise not be exposed to during their formative years. We exist to be that experience for students.
In addition to our after school enrichment services, Creative Hearts & Minds offers integrated arts classes during the regular school day, where our teaching artists may work directly with classroom teachers, utilizing the arts to help students better understand traditional disciplines such as English, Social Studies, and yes, even Math and Science. As advocates of STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Math), we also offer professional development sessions, where we facilitate instruction and curricula for classroom teachers to then further integrate the arts into their own classes. The creative hearts and minds of students, need more of this arts element in their education, more creative thinking skills for the 21st century, and more opportunities to connect to different dimensions of themselves and our creative world. The deep void of the arts at many schools does not need to remain so, and we are honored to begin doing our part to eradicate this part of the achievement gap / opportunity gap / education debt.
Los Angeles students deserve quality arts education and enrichment, and we are here to help provide it for them.
Though Creative Hearts & Minds is just beginning this journey, actualizing what we have so far would not have been possible without the help of Adrian and Melvin of the Los Angeles Harbor Business Source. They helped us in thinking through our model at initial meetings, and have always been eager to respond and assist throughout the way. Their services to the community, with authentic care and expertise, in consulting, inspiration, and in helping with the logistics of opening up a business/organization are invaluable; with the assistance of HBS, we at Creative Hearts & Minds, look forward to continuing to grow, serving more youth, and creating more jobs, throughout the City of Los Angeles, with a purpose of helping to make our city and world, a better place.”
A big congratulations to Creative Hearts & Minds for many more successes to come!