Photo: Los Angeles Times
Jackie DesRosier conducts a YOLA at HOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles at Heart of Los Angeles) youth orchestra spring concert.
The arts have a mysterious capacity to touch people in ways that nothing else does. It’s as if most of what we do or even think about every day is on the surface of things, involving the small part of our brains that is conscious. The arts, however, can reach into the unconscious part and make hidden flowers bloom.
Read how, in Los Angeles, an arts program is helping students flourish.
Jessica Gelt writes at the Los Angeles Times, “It is one of the most densely populated areas west of the Mississippi. The poverty rate is over 35%, and more than a quarter of all households earns less than $15,000 per year. At least 30 gangs roam the streets, recruiting children as young as 9. The high school graduation rate is around 50%.
“That’s the state of affairs in Westlake, Pico Union and Koreatown, according to the organization Heart of Los Angeles. The group reaches more than 2,000 kids in those neighborhoods every year through after-school arts and athletics programs, but its crowning achievement is its partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic: Youth Orchestra Los Angeles at Heart of Los Angeles, or YOLA at HOLA. …
“The program provides intensive orchestral instruction, including classes on music creativity, singing and ensemble rehearsals, to 250 students in 1st through 12th grades. Classes take place daily. An hour of academic tutoring is thrown in each afternoon for good measure. …
“More than 350 families land on the waiting list for programs at HOLA every quarter, so Brown said HOLA wants to build a recreation center to serve more people. The statistics coming out of the HOLA’s academic enrichment, visual arts and music programs speak to why demand is so high.
“Of the 63 students in those programs who were high school seniors in 2015, 100% of them graduated, and 97% went on to college. …
“[HOLA Executive Director Tony] Brown and his staff are aggressive in preventing kids from falling between the cracks. They sometimes attend parent-teacher conferences to find out what support a child needs, and when a student disappears from their programs, a staff member might make a house call to help bring that student back. …
“Brown likes to tell the success story of a boy named Raymond who came through the program as a troubled middle-school student. His grandmother brought him to YOLA at HOLA because he was failing in school and in danger of joining a gang.
“ ‘This young man started playing the clarinet, and he played the heck out of it. Next thing you know he’s earned his way to playing in London with YOLA at HOLA and Dudamel,’ Brown said, referring to the youth orchestra’s 2013 trip overseas. Raymond is now attending UC Santa Cruz.”
Read why National Endowment for the Arts is crucial to this program, here.
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