In November IF Fellow Ieva Notturno and IF Vice President Jeff Prudhomme delivered a two-day training workshop for twelve young artists at the Joan Mitchell Foundation in New York City. The trainees are part of the Youth Leadership Council working to develop and convene a Youth Creativity Summit in February 2018. Their ages ranged from 16-26. The Summit is intended to be by and for youth. The members of the Leadership Council will use the IF collaborative discussion process to co-develop the Summit and to facilitate exploratory discussions during the Summit. In the Summit members of the Youth Leadership Council will facilitate discussions that explore different aspects of creativity and how creativity can connect to the lives of the youth participants as individuals, as young creative professionals, and as engaged members of their communities.

In developing the IF workshop for young artists, Ieva and Jeff collaborated with the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Artist Programs Manager, José Ortiz. José heads up the Foundation’s Youth Artist Initiative. He has been playing a lead role in fostering a youth-driven approach to developing the NYC Youth Creativity Summit. He hosted the IF training workshop at the Foundation’s offices. His active collaboration with Ieva and Jeff proved essential for tailoring the workshop to the interests and needs of the Youth Leadership Council. The NYC Youth Creativity Summit will be a partnership of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Lincoln Center Education Program.

This IF training workshop grew out of a set of meetings with Loree Goffigon as part of her Community Works’ Creativity Matters initiative. Loree has been instrumental in sparking a national initiative of Youth Creativity Summits in four different cities. Chicago had their event in October 2017.  NYC will have theirs in February 2018. Los Angeles and D.C. will hold their Summits in March. Loree has been playing a vital role as connector to bring together individuals and organizations who could help make these Summits a reality. Ieva and Jeff hope to build on these connections and expand their work with the Youth Creativity Summits by offering a similar workshop in DC in January 2018 with the collaboration of David Markey of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.