Every day, many Southeast Baltimore families face challenges related to poverty and addiction. The Creative Alliance joins with other community institutions - churches, schools and libraries - to provide for the needs of neighborhood children.

The Creative Alliance offers summer and after-school programs to give kids a safe haven. With the rising demand for the Creative Alliance’s quality, innovative art education programs, what began as a month-long summer program in Southeast branches of the Enoch Pratt library, has expanded year-round to teen centers, middle schools, and community centers as well as library branches.

The Creative Alliance’s inaugural children’s education program, Open Minds, was developed and produced in 1998 at the Patterson Park, Canton and Highlandtown branches of the Enoch Pratt Free Library . Combining reading and art making, Open Minds is designed to attract children to use their neighborhood library and become more comfortable with reading as a source of pleasure and learning. Open Minds has provided hundreds of participants with their first opportunity to make art.

"It keeps me out of trouble so I can do better things."
Travon Braxton, 13

"We studied artists and put our thoughts into their ideas."
Melissa Harrington, 12

Blue makes me feel free and comfortable because it reminds me of the sky." Crishawna Jackson, 13

"If I were a piece of art, I would be a protrait of me in a wedding dress...woth diamonds on the cuff, neck and on the really really long 20' train." Pamela Witherspoon, 12

"…I would be a non-wig wearing Andy Warhol because he draws thing that no one else would think of…" Joshua Pulley

Taught by experienced artist/teachers with trained assistants and superbly designed curricula, Creative Alliance arts education programs teach young people about the art and literacy, enlivening lives and spirits. In the Open Minds summer and after-school programs (in partnership with the Canton, Highlandtown and Patterson Park branches of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, neighborhood schools and community centers) kids read excellent, carefully selected books. Projects created in response to those stories are shared with family, friends and neighbors in public exhibitions. Young visual artists create self portraits, prints, collages, paintings, jewelry, sculpture and mosaics.

An Art Club and a Performing Arts Club are offered at Southeast Youth Academy, as part of our continued partnership with the academy. Canton Middle school youth are developing skills in the arts as well as leadership abilities. Our kids practice theater skills such as improvisation, voice projection and pantomime. A performance for peers, family and friends is the culminating event for those members studying theater arts.

Creative Alliance produces in-school curricula as well as after school programs. At Collington Square School, mini-courses such as Storytelling & Cartooning, Literacy through Photography and Hip Hop Theater are offered in partnership with the Baltimore Curriculum Project. All Creative Alliance youth education programs focus on vocabulary, problem solving, creative thinking, skill building, teamwork and self reliance. Creative Alliance youth learn new techniques, become comfortable with expressing themselves and gain confidence. As young artist William Bailey put it “I was born to be good at art. I am good at it because of who I am.”

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