Arts Academy Will Uplift Strong Voices of Washington Students in Foster Care

Rebecca Elatiki has been an artist her whole life. Her mother was an opera singer, and Elatiki started playing instruments including the trumpet, guitar, and piano at a young age.

When she entered into foster care at the age of 14, she experienced a “big severance” from the life she’d known.

“I really credit music for getting me through that experience of that transition,” Elatiki said.

Now a social worker and a teaching artist, Elatiki acknowledges the importance of giving back. That’s one of the reasons she’ll be teaching at the Strong Voices Youth Arts Academy.

The arts academy — which will take place April 2–7, 2023, in Port Townsend — will host up to 45 students in foster care for a week of arts education, for free. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is supporting the event with an investment of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds.

Centrum, a nonprofit arts organization that has partnered with OSPI in the past, is hosting the event. Like other programs, Strong Voices aims to support students who otherwise may not feel like they have a voice, according to Alyssa deLeon, Program Manager for Creative Youth Development at Centrum.

She added that one of her goals is to reach students, like those in foster care, who may not have access to opportunities like the arts academy.

“There’s really a lot of places where people can go under the radar or not be noticed because things are seeming pretty okay, but then they’re not getting access to the things that the kids who are really, really struggling … are getting,” deLeon said.

Over the course of the week, students will engage with a variety of art forms, including music, theater, visual art, poetry, and dance. Elatiki will be teaching music with the intention of giving students an opportunity to “reclaim parts of ourselves.”

Through learning about music and collaborating to create a song together, Elatiki hopes to create space for students to both celebrate their identity as a foster youth and shed that label as the only identity that defines them.

“There’s so much complexity in their lives that a lot of times, and especially at that age, it’s kind of impossible to unravel because a lot of it is overwhelming, it’s traumatic,” Elatiki said.

Students in their preteen and teenage years are navigating hormonal changes and discovering their identity, Elatiki added, and the additional layer of questions around their family status “can be a lot for a kid.”

Art provides an opportunity for these students to untangle some of this complexity by identifying and expressing their feelings, Elatiki said.

“It’s an opportunity to connect with other people, to collaborate in how we share our stories and how we make sense of stories and ourselves,” Elatiki said. “It’s an opportunity to not hold everything inside. Ultimately, I think it’s an opportunity to find a deeper self in that complexity — a self that can hold that complexity.”

Teaching artist Margie McDonald will be working with the Strong Voices students on creating large-scale, wearable cardboard art. She’ll be incorporating other “real-world” tools like hot glue and leather sewing awls to support the students in putting their creations together.

“Cardboard is a real-life material that’s accessible everywhere,” McDonald said. “Even if we’re using shiny new stuff, the material is available everywhere.”

McDonald added that she’ll be working with students one-on-one to see what approaches work best for them, whether that’s planning out their design first or jumping into working with the material.

“I expect them to have fun,” McDonald said. “An important thing about learning is having fun while you do it.”

At the end of the arts academy, McDonald hopes the students take with them a feeling of success for trying new things and doing something different.

“Arts education gives you a whole different way to think, a creative way to think,” McDonald said. “There isn’t one right answer; everybody has a right answer.”

This story was written by Chelsea Embree, Communications Strategist at OSPI. You can contact the Communications Team at commteam@k12.wa.us.