We talk with Ava Lehrer, Director of 92Y’s Center for Arts Learning & Leadership about how a global crisis sparked a national education initiative — and why top artists and thought leaders want to be part of it.
If you can see it, you can be it. It’s the spirit that has driven 92Y’s arts education initiatives for nearly 25 years, bringing writers like Maya Angelou to talk with New York City public school students in our lounge, musicians like Pedrito Martinez to perform for elementary school students in our hall, filmmaker Sofia Coppola to mentor our arts career-leaning teen interns on her set, and many others into classrooms across the five boroughs. Through the generous support of donors, we’ve been able to bring arts education to 16,000 NYC public school students and their teachers every year, connecting children and young adults with limited or no arts education in their schools with the highest quality artists. Then the pandemic hit.
“When cultural institutions shut down in March, 92Y was one of the very first to pivot to event livestreams and virtual instruction for our continuing ed classes,” says Ava Lehrer. “The deep experience and fluency we gained in a very short time brought an aha! moment: We would use this unprecedented time and experience to expand upon 92Y’s education outreach mission of connecting students with limited exposure to arts education with exceptional artists and thinkers, reaching beyond our building’s walls and city limits to take our mission to schools across the country.”
Lehrer says, “Cultural institutions nationwide are struggling to figure out how to adapt to the current reality and serve their communities. We’re ready. We've come up with a model that takes the amazing work and presenters already central to our programming areas and brings them into the range of educational settings this moment requires, from virtual to hybrid. We’re able to engage more students with more outstanding talent than ever before at precisely the time this is most needed.”
The Young Leaders series expands the focus of 92Y’s education outreach work beyond the arts into the areas of science, civics, politics and more. Working with us in launching the series this fall are award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, who will explore communicating across America’s racial divide, and David Mitchell, who will talk with students about getting started as a creative writer and Christian McBride, who will examine jazz as a distinctly American art form. But we’ll also have presenters like Amanda Litman, co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, who will talk about how to effect real societal change. “Students will be able to engage in civic dialogue and discussion with leading public policy figures — and with peers from across the country,” says Lehrer. “The idea that students will be able to discover their intellectual passions remains at the center of what we do. How can you get on a path to any form of leadership if you haven’t had the opportunity to engage in exploration and discovery of yourself?”
Lehrer says there isn’t another initiative of this kind anywhere in the US right now. “92Y is unique in being able to build upon a model of outreach and access we have embraced for decades, along with close relationships with leading artists and thinkers developed over many years, and developing anew all the time. The range of what 92Y explores and offers is unparalleled. What excites me most about that is how it gives us the ability to help prepare young people to participate fully in the future of their world.”