Arts Education for Inner-city Youth

Founded in 2002 to counteract the community decline threatening OTR residents and endangering youth development, Elementz is an organization dedicated to working with underserved inner-city youth.  Due to economic circumstances or family dysfunction, these youths predominantly exist outside the mainstream of the community, and lack the expected social-emotional skills necessary to succeed in school and life.  Many of these inner-city teens and children may lack strong family support and positive adult guidance making them easily drawn to alternatives plaguing low-income neighborhoods including petty theft, drugs, guns and violence.

Since its founding, Elementz has been focused on teaching community engagement and leadership skills to inner-city youth. For the first four years Elementz provided classes and activities that helped youth develop leadership skills and to accept civic responsibility.  In 2006, Elementz opened a small recording studio for kids hanging out on the street and today, that sparse recording studio has evolved into a full-fledged urban arts center, teaching music, song-writing, poetry, visual art and dance in the “hip hop” or “street” culture style.

Once entering our center, youth are challenged to discover an art form (s) that allows them to use creativity, learn to work collaboratively, and to set and achieve personal goals. Members learn to appreciate the art style that they have selected, and eventually grow confidence in writing, composing, or choreographing their own personal works.   Elementz places high value on having the youth perform their work in public, as this gives them a connection with the wider community and breaks down some of the barriers that exist for those who are isolated in low-income neighborhoods. For instance, in 2019, Elementz collaborated with the Cincinnati Music Festival to bring emerging artists from hip hop culture to public stages. Moreover, in 2020, during the COVID-19 crisis, Elementz collaborated with Cincinnati Public Radio to produce a teen podcast series, “Democracy and Z”, made available on the NPR national podcast platform.

This fundraiser is for $25,000 to support our growing volume of after-school and in-school work with inner-city teens and children.  With funding this year, we plan to focus on the local inner-city youth who have lost two months of education at the end of the school year. We believe that the impact of the COVID-19 crisis will play out over the next few years for this group as many have not been able to participate in classes since mid-March.