 There is no rum here, not happening. I know you probably were hoping there was like a hidden mojito somewhere. That's not the case. But there's some really great interesting information about our campus here. So the tower, which is directly outside of this space, which we call the jewel box, was designed in 1963 by Cuban architect Enrique Gutierrez and it features a mural by a Brazilian artist Francisco Bernand with more than 28,000 hand-painted and fired tiles. The jewel box, the space that you're currently in, was designed in 1974 by Ignacio Cabrera Justiz, who is an architect from Coral Gables, Florida. The glass tapestry you see around the perimeter of the building was designed in France and is based on an abstract painting by a German artist Johannes Dietz. That describes the rum production process. I know, really cool. The structure that you're in right now is a really quality example of a modern cantilevered structure. We are raised 47 feet above the ground on a pedestal and there's actually the plaza outside which is between the jewel box and the tower. It does feature the Bacardi bat. So as you're walking across the plaza, make sure you take a look at the tiles on your feet or beneath your feet to see the wonderful illustration of that emblematic and iconic. I just feel really comfortable in this space and wanted to share also that the National Young Arts Foundation is an actual competition for those of you who don't know and are not aware and I am also an alumni in theater class of 2000 so I feel really, really comfortable in this space and we're really excited for this partnership. Our current alumni exhibition on campus which is on view in the gallery was curated by acclaimed director, photographer and who happens to be our very own vice president of artistic programs, Lisa Leone and the exhibitionist title, Can We Be As Brave? The exhibition features the works of 13 young arts alumni and we'd like you to view the exhibition really at your opportunity perhaps in a space where you're taking lunch and have an opportunity to see that, okay? And this Friday, Emmy Award winning composer, pianist, singer, music director Lance Horn in 1996, winner in classical music will present Revelations, a new musical which is based on an unpublished work by Ann Rice. Information about this performance is available on our website which is youngarts.org. Please take a look at that. Today is really a momentous day because we celebrate the launch of the application of our 2020 Young Arts National Competition. Yeah, this is a big, yeah, give that a round of applause. It's a really big deal because it's a great opportunity for the next generation of artists. I'm going to tell you about that. So our performing arts disciplines in the competition include theater and we are now accepting applications through October 11 from emerging artists ages 15 to 18 or in grades 10 through 12. Among our notable young arts theater alumni are Timothy Chalamet from Call Me By Your Name, Viola Davis. I could list everything but then we'd be here till 3 p.m. Josh Groban, Terrell Alvin McCraney of Moonlight, yes, yes, yes, yes, Billy Porter, okay. And Kerry Washington. So we have provided information and materials for you to share with your colleagues or the young people that you know who would really benefit from the opportunity to compete in a very creative way. And please review those at your leisure. So lastly, we welcome you to be inspired by your time here in Miami. Also keep a handkerchief around because you might, sweat beads might be forming as you walk from one space to the other. Just get ready for it. It's great. This year's TCG Conference challenges you to consider the value and necessity of adaptability. It asks you to think about Miami's plurality of global cultures and the history of reinvention. And it focuses on programmatic ideas such as audience and community engagement. Your work, you work to contribute to an inclusive and thriving theater and arts community. We are excited to partner and to partner and work together for this arts community in support of the next generation of artists to foster their creative and professional development and to support them on their path to becoming the artist that they want to be. Once again, welcome to Miami and enjoy your time here on Young Arts Campus. And then just one last bit too. Miriam and I will be at the block party tonight. Yeah. Bring a handkerchief. That might be a sweating happening there too. So that's a great opportunity for us to convene. If you have any questions about our national competition, please feel free to like maybe make some notes. We'll be at the party tonight and we can chat more about our work with education and the competition. All right. Have a good conference. Thank you so much. Hi. Good morning. Welcome to Miami. Thank you, Miriam and Evan, for your hospitality. This place is gorgeous. My name is Adrian Boudu. I'm TCG's Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer. To those of you here in the room at the National Arts Young Arts Foundation in Miami and to those of you watching this session via the live stream, it presented in partnership with HowlRound. Welcome to TCG's Education Conference. That said, if you're speaking today, please remember to speak directly into the microphone or it will not get recorded. And we do need to share this incredible day with the folks outside of this space. I'd like to take a special moment to thank Laurie Baskin, TCG's Director of Policy Research and Collective Action for her leadership. And to the entire National Planning Committee, many members are here today. Please stand or signal as you're able to so we may recognize and thank you. Today we will focus on three main areas of work. Inclusion and empowerment of youth voices, trauma-informed care, and safety of youth in our theaters. These tracks are an extension of the great work from last year's Education Conference in St. Louis. We hope these conversations today contribute to creating a brave, welcoming, inclusive space for all students in our theaters. To kick off our day, we're going to hear from the incredible Evelyn Francis, Producing Co-Executive Director at Theater Offensive in Boston. Evelyn is an Innovative Theater Artist Award-winning Educator and Established Arts Administrator. Evelyn's Masters in the Theater Education from Emerson College culminated in a thesis which examined the effects of devised work in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth from the Theater Offensive True Colors Out Youth Theater Program. As a result of her work with the program, True Colors was designated the 2008 Social Innovator for Empowering Youth Through the Arts by the Social Innovation Forum. In 2016, Evelyn traveled to the White House to receive the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from First Lady Michelle Obama on behalf of True Colors. In 2013 and 2014, Evelyn served as the lead researcher for the Theater Offensive on a project studying the effects of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer specific youth theater programming as an intervention for low self-esteem and depression in LGBTQ youth. So I've had the pleasure to work with Evelyn at the Theater Offensive many years ago and to go off script a little bit, which is how our relationship usually is. I just read Evelyn's bio, but at the end of the day, Evelyn is just a badass woman leader and I'm so excited that you're here and not only do you advocate for queer youth, but you inspire so many adults. I know your work at the Theater Offensive has inspired me and it's pretty incredible. So I'm so happy you're here and I'm so happy that I get the privilege of introducing you. So Evelyn Francis. Thank you, Adrienne. Now I got to live up to that intro. We'll see how I do. So I'm here today to talk about the Theater Health Study and I'm so excited that the Education Pre-Conference is focusing on youth voice and safety and trauma-informed care and I will say just to I tend to go off script as well as Adrienne just did. I go off script so I have written everything down so I stick within time according to what Laurie has said to me. So I'm going to talk about the collaboration that Adrienne mentioned. It's a collaboration between the Theater Offensive and the Boston Children's Hospital and my collaborator on the project, Gerald Kauzo. Unfortunately he couldn't be here today but he's an associate professor at San Diego State University now but our collaboration started when he was at Boston Children's Hospital and he was kind enough to participate by contributing some videos. So hold on to your hats. We got researchers talking on video a little bit later so I know it's an exciting morning everybody. So let's go to the first thing. So Gerald is so good because he says whenever you do a presentation Evelyn you really want to have the takeaways at the beginning and the end. That way if anybody walks out in the middle they at least know what they're walking out on. So these are the takeaways from my presentation this morning. So first off, developing an evaluation and assessment plan is iterative. Let program improvement guide you not the funders. Let the program improvement guide you not the funders. Community-based participatory research or CBPR helps programs maintain their values while engaging in research studies and be specific when engaging in research be specific about the question you want to answer. Design justice, I can't emphasize this enough, youth should be part of the framing of research or any program that you are doing. Theater can improve self-esteem and keep depression from deepening. And then finally research data is part of a bigger picture. So let research inform your program but not dictate it. So a little bit about the theater offensive for folks who don't know us. So this is our mission we have a new mission coming out in July along with my new title producing co-executive director. I am right now the interim artistic director but there's lots of changing changes of foot at the theater offensive. So our mission as of today is to present the diverse realities of LGBTQ lives through art so bold it breaks through personal isolation challenges the status quo and helps bring sorry build thriving communities. So we were founded in Boston I keep flashing I don't know why she just wants to make a show of it okay. So founded in Boston in 1989 is a guerrilla street theater troupe by our founder Abe Ryback during the early AIDS crisis and this is a photo of our amazing staff at a pride march in Boston. So this is a complex thing here we have a complex grouping of programs in our organization and so I've included this chart to help you understand a little bit the structure of our organization before we start. So our overall programming approach is called out in your neighborhood so that's the whole chart out in your neighborhood and our programming includes the Outhood series oh she's flashing again hold on come on girl there you go the residency program and the residency program which are not age specific programs and then true colors out your theater which works with youth ages 14 to 29 through 9 through 4 program components including two touring ensembles for beginner and advanced participants and a peer elected advisory committee and also a series of free workshops and trainings that are held throughout the year. So I'll be referring to materials mostly about the troupe here on the bottom left girl maybe is our tech help somewhere that we can maybe get that straightened out I don't know what's going on the tech has left the building so we're just gonna have to deal with it. So the true colors is the longest running program in our organization and it's also the longest running program for LGBTQ youth in the country maybe the world we're not sure we haven't confirmed that but maybe the world so overall we work with about 75 to 100 youth each year and the true colors troupe is for youth ages 14 to 22 and has roughly 50 youth over the course of the year with about 15 to 20 youth each session and it's important to note that this is the structure of our now 1.5 million dollar organization but I began working at the theater offensive in 2001 when we were just $200,000 so some of you scaling up or down I feel your pain whether it be growing pains or shrinking pains whatever that might be so I always when starting to have a conversation about true colors start with the youth and our community being able to speak for themselves I feel like that's a really critical part of my work is to make sure that youth voices are heard in every place that I'm speaking and so I'm gonna have to get out of this here low tech low tech and we're gonna go over to here and we're gonna have the youth speak for themselves no somehow I knew this is gonna happen yeah we got nothing no sound my wife says plug it to unplug it and plug it back in see if that works no we have it my wife is always right remember that when you meet a person and stuff like that that you feel like you know them for like a year lifetime yeah like a lifetime true colors is a theater troupe that serves kids from 14 to 22 in the lgbtq community and it's more than just about acting it's about really spreading awareness of issues in the queer community hi sweetheart how was your day it was fine just fine yes fine I'm Armenian and my family is very conservative when my father discovered I was gay he said in a very soft monotone voice be normal two words couldn't just kill you why do you always talk to my family he doesn't know about us he doesn't know about us it's your man I'm a man we're not supposed to be together before I came to true colors I really try to be discreet with my sexuality I didn't like to speak up as much okay no pick up my book pick up my book true colors I saw how people were comfortable in their own skin and it influenced me to get out of my shell just to you know be myself when we go to true colors labels are gone they're gone they're just taken away and you're just you tejana says she's never been more real she's never found a place where she can be as honest as she's been able to be with herself as chaotic as the world can be as chaotic as a life for glbtq youth can be she feels like this is a place where she can rest honey you are you and there is no changing that I love you and God loves you I just think they're groundbreaking this is a space where youth can put their words out into the world I don't care what anyone has to say I am a gay black male who loves God and God loves this gay black male he's like I feel like crying I feel like smiling I feel like just screaming amen I thought it was awesome I thought it was really good they were just like honest and like open about everything and it was like cool to hear that something needs to be said this needed to be said to open the eye to the acceptance of everybody there were definitely some kids who I think were like really kind of like oh my gosh those two boys just kissed or oh my gosh those two girls just kissed but by the end of it oh yep two boys just kissed no big deal you know like I feel like it would be great for all kids to see that great look see I told you you could pull this look off kind of look like a bro sweet it touched me personally being a trans man just to have that on stage I was crying actually in the audience because it just touched me so much I don't think that you could overstate the impact of this play how does it feel to kiss your own gender a lot of these kids they probably haven't heard people their own age say that they were gay so I think that alone is going to stick with a lot of these students forever I'm going to get my swag on with you yes I'm trying to make a difference for other people whether you're gay or bi or transgender or half autism you still are a human being and you have the rights to love yourself and do what you want to do what your heart desires okay so uh where are we here we are okay so the start of the theater health study really begins with my personal love of assessment and evaluation and it's not just for the purposes of gathering quantitative and qualitative data or to respond to the increase of reporting requirements by funders and oh boy are they increasing I love it because it provides an opportunity for youth and teaching artists and community to formally review your programming it provides concrete measures to improve programming and it helps build better relationships so this is from evaluation in the sacred bundle measure what you value and others will value what you measure so arts organizations oh boy where's my cursor lots of tech problems today arts organizations and nonprofits are very challenged to name what they value when we don't name what we value there is little room for staff and community to celebrate successes and less clarity around challenges that need to be addressed for program improvement so for close to a decade I think most particularly small arts organizations would confess that they were only evaluating programs to comply with funder demands and they are increasing so uh this uh is a required attachment for a $50,000 grant I almost passed out when I saw it so the level of data collection required for this form is hundreds of hours of work it excludes the trans community completely and is simply impossible in some cases how can smaller organizations possibly compete for these funds without making things up or just flat out lying this is another workshop that or speech I would give which is measuring up a funder a funder's intervention so for an arts organization collecting the data is just many many hours away from the very work that impacts the lives of young people we work with however a lot of organizations start here when it comes to assessment they have a document to fill out for a funder and they start collecting information to report out so luckily I had an amazing mentor at the massachusetts cultural council h mark smith who nearly 20 years ago helped me understand the value of evaluation and assessment in order to create better programs for your community and this is actually where we started so this is a logic model this is the logic behind your program and in 2003 this was the logic model that I started with so how things are your program as an intervention the change that will come out of your program in a new world order so a logic model is a way of telling your story this sadly is now my logic model favorite so after several years this became my favorite form of logic model and this is our recent draft updated drafts but you get the idea so it has clearly defined program there's programming linked to positive outcomes it provides language to development staff and it's a one pager for new program staff and contractors as well as funders now I wish I could say through all of this love of evaluation and assessment that I didn't have an ulterior motive for my love of it but I did so for several years around the early 2000s we had been fighting for every single dime that we received at the theater offensive and we were reject being rejected by the exact same funders who were fully funding our colleagues the difference we were working with queer and trans youth so I really got into evaluation and assessment because I could I uh oh no go back because uh oh I really got into evaluation and assessment because I knew that we could prove that we were one of the strongest programs in the city and it was actually homophobia and transphobia that were the real barrier for our program so by 2009 my obsession was noticed by several of our colleagues in youth arts in boston and our organization was asked to be the theater component for the boston youth arts evaluation project this was a group of organizations across discipline music dance theater visual art and public art who came together to develop a fee field wide framework a handbook and a workbook all accessible for free online for you to download a lot of these sibling organizations felt that they needed a bump in their funding and support for the next generation of youth and felt like contributing to this particular process would help shed light on these five programs and would lead to more funding so here's some of the data that came out of the youth arts boston youth arts evaluation project which we call buy up for short uh and uh so this is the we connect so connecting to community so 100 percent of youth agreed or strongly agreed that they've gained trusting relationships with staff here 96 percent said I believe that what I create positively impacts others and then the quote at true colors I have learned what it's like to be a leader I have learned what it's like to have a family I have learned what it's like to change lives so the data that we collected was both quantitative and qualitative data and we were so excited because after we published the book we got a group of funders together to uh and we wanted to find out what the next funding steps might be for this particular project and most of the funders were impressed with our efforts though they're conveniently was no money available for us to continue the project but there was one person one person in that group that was not impressed at all in fact he insisted that internal evaluation would never prove effectiveness of programs to funders because the data could be skewed by all parties so a young person wouldn't be honest because it might get their teacher in trouble he advises to engage with professional researchers what three years we worked on the boston youth arts evaluation project three years thinking that this would come to something in the end and oh boy it didn't so this is when my intent antenna went up to see if we could find a professional researcher to help us and to take our tools to the next level so entered Gerald oh my god this man is so amazing so in a chance meeting that Abe our founding director and I had we met him and he's he at the time was assistant professor of pediatrics in the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at boston children's hospital and his research focused on lgbtq youth perfect and he also was wanting to engage in a community-based approach so we talked to him about true colors and this current challenge set before us by the funders and he told us that there was funding called c core in boston dedicated to connecting boston children's hospital researchers with community organizations and so we jumped at the opportunity to work together so what we know is that there's growing literature that youth who identify as lgbtq are at a disproportionate risk for a range of adverse physical health and mental health outcomes this risk is not due to these identities in and of themselves but to exposure to social context that directly or indirectly stigmatize these identities victimize youth who have these identities or that perpetuate inequalities power resources access to care that underlies these health disparities so intro colors we knew this firsthand from the youth but Gerald said that there was very little known about evidence-based programs or treatment that can protect lgbtq youth and enable resistance or promote health so we felt like we were on to something so we took the idea of researching true colors effect to the leadership and inclusion council our youth council and many many ideas for what the research could be about came up from the young people but the conversation seemed to hone in on the effect true colors had on depression and self-esteem in the members of the group and in the end the lyc voted to proceed with the research with stipulations the first is that youth needed to be added to the research team and that any youth in true colors that did not want to participate of course should not be forced to do so so as we put together our application for the institutional review board or the IRB I began to learn why research in our programs is so challenging there are some competing needs so we know that the needs of the population are on one side the program priorities what you said as priorities on the other satisfying what the stakeholders so the people who've paid you to do this project and then the goals of the researchers they're all at odds with one another so also we can't ignore the fact that medical and academic mistrust that exists in the community are very well documented being referred to as subjects history of flagrant abuses the placebo versus treatment and the ethicalness of that and then no direct benefits for a community so this there's this one approach called community-based participatory research and what are the principles here so communities are sometimes aware of the issues that are pressing sometimes they don't know the mult magnitude and sometimes they're not sure how to proceed so CBPR engages community in the process of discovery empowerment and positive change so the approaches are it builds on strengths and resources in the community it's a collaborative partnership at all stages of research search it integrates knowledge and action promotes co-learning and empowerment it's cyclical and iterative it addresses health from positive perspectives it disseminates findings and knowledge gained to all of the partners so our research question then was does true colors contribute positively to mental health and self-esteem that's what we came down to this basic question so our research goals were to do a longitudinal study through surveys and collection of qualitative data through interviews to develop a model of how true colors influence depression and self-esteem processes and then identifying the next steps so now we get Gerald he's going to have a talk with us so let's hear from him about the methods used in the theater health study my cursor keeps disappearing here you are girl yes okay all right so how did we study the theater health study how did we actually evaluate it well first in talking to Evelyn Abe and Nick doing some observations of the true colors program and also in reading the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation program report it was clear that there was a model of development and resilience but the real question was you know is the program having its intended effect is it working and not only that but how do we know that it's working and what's contributing to its success and it's tricky and a program of its size given that small although it's steady they consistently had the same number of youth coming in each season and research you typically need large numbers of individuals in a program in order to test an effect however what we could do in a small group is use mixed methods so provide surveys to the young people and also interview them to understand their sense of the process and that's what we did because we were interested in seeing how program involvement and involvement in true colors impacts mental health and self-esteem we used high quality measures in the field for depression and self-esteem to see where the youth were at in terms of their depression and self-esteem but we were also interested in the story how this program is fitting in and the youth's lives the experiences they're having and the meaning of those experiences and we leaned a lot more heavily on the qualitative data so these one-on-one interviews that we did with the youth to sort of extract the overall picture so we also interviewed youths to understand their motivations for doing true colors how the day-to-day of the program fits into their lives and in addition because we wanted to see you know whether it's the true colors program that's having an impact on LGBTQIA youth's lives or just theater in general we also tried to find an approximate comparison group of youth who identify as LGBTQIA who are also involved in a theater type experience but who might be experiencing a different type of theater program so you know the hallmark of true colors is that youth are taking experiences from their own lives and using that to generate original theater content you know they're telling stories from their own lives to make an impact on the audience other theater models might take existing content like a script or a play and perform that still very important still a great way to be creative and express yourself but we wanted to get a contrasting experience of LGBTQIA youth who are also involved in theater so we had to do our work and see is there another group of youth who are LGBTQ identified who are also theater involved in Boston and see if we can compare their experiences using the same methods surveys interviews and see how those youth are doing and compare them to the true colors youth just to get that contrasting experience so these are mixed methods approaches but they help to capture the story and get convergence across different types of data just a little bit about the implementation you heard a little bit of it but just so you know what we did so we did about six months of prep time together going through the LIC having discussions with staff and also getting IRB approval and some training on research so the study happened over the course of one year in true colors three different sessions that we did the summer the fall and the spring and we had to find a comparison group to study and the comparison group was conducted by youth that that research was the there were youth facilitators who were chosen as researchers for that comparison group and that comparison group Gerald mentioned was a school group but it was an out of school time program that was a theater program so then we analyzed the data after each session and then we came out with the final report so here's a little of the final report is probably too far away for you to see it but Gerald's going to talk about the results from his perspective and I just wanted to make sure you all got a visual here and the things that I feel most drawn to which of course I'm a storyteller are the narratives and so there are two quotes here that I just want to read out so the one in the green bubble yeah I think true colors definitely helped me with my depression because I joined after I graduated so I was still going through that whole phase of depression but I think just having that the whole theater experience and being able to do what I loved definitely brought me out of that and then this pink bubble down here I think it's had an effect on my self-esteem the way I see myself just because I don't know I feel like it's just like it's given me so much confidence in who I am growing into the person that I am I wasn't this person two years ago or even a year ago when I joined but I just think all the confidence it's given me has really helped my self-esteem so the conclusions of our research were that first many many youth reported depressive symptoms low self-esteem and low adult support at home which was a one of the things that we wanted to find out during bi-app was what are connections to other adult support and the true colors program provides a creative art space that empowers youth to thrive in positive ways that helps them develop healthy coping skills grow as individuals with healthier self-esteem and learn new skills that can be applied to their daily lives true colors has the potential to provide the adult support the youth are lacking in their households and is uniquely positioned to connect youth to mental health resources and additional support so let's hear a little bit from Gerald again about the findings and I put the clips notes version there on the side if you haven't figured that out so that you can follow along so there are very several key takeaway points from the theater health study it's important to first bear in mind that to put all these findings into context so much of the research in public health and psychology on LGBTQIA youth is focused specifically on the health outcomes and usually on the ways in which LGBTQIA youth are not faring as well as their heterosexual or cisgender peers there's very little work done on resilience how they're thriving or research that's actually evaluating programs that support their healthy development success and thriving so already just focusing on the true colors program and evaluating that and seeing what works and what doesn't work about it is already a contribution so the key findings so first although we found that many youth in the true colors program met the cutoff for probable mental depression and that these scores were stable across their involvement in the study we also found that the youth reported very high self-esteem okay so this finding was somewhat surprising to all of us that so many of the youth reported high depression scores or high depressive symptom scores but also surprising was that despite you know these high depressive symptom scores so many of the youth reported high self-esteem so there's they're very different outcomes but they're opposite sides of the story so youth felt very positively about themselves despite you know experiencing depressive distress where youth in the true colors program reported having you know few supportive adults in the house which is again consistent with prior studies on LGBTQIA youth who often face rejection in multiple contexts again a lot of times based on their sexual orientation or gender identity we found that youth who were involved in this program appeared to report a greater number of adults who provided encouragement who supported them when they had problems or were experiencing problems or when they were feeling upset so it appears that being involved in community programs such as true colors just increases the number of supportive adults that could be in a young person's life and there's a growing literature that demonstrates that having you know additional supports particularly these other adult supports who aren't necessarily your parents can have such a beneficial impact on young people's lives we found that the youth in true colors in comparison to LGBTQIA youth who were in this comparison group you know I mentioned this earlier we found LGBTQIA youth who were also involved in a theater program in a school-based setting what we found is that the youth in the true colors program were generally dealing with more depressive symptoms and daily stressors than youth in that comparison sample okay now the youth in the comparison sample had lower depressive symptoms scores and also generally high self-esteem okay so in comparing the two groups what we can see is that perhaps the youth who are in this community sample you know in the true color sample might be dealing with a lot more which makes the impact of this community program that much greater okay that much more necessary they might need this program a little bit more because they might be dealing with greater stressors and so the benefits of this program might go a lot longer for youth who might have greater need where the data really came alive or in the interviews um so although it was clear that the program was not a replacement for therapy okay so the youth said for example that um they were seeing therapists on the side or that they had a counselor on the side um and we want to be very clear that you know um this arts program shouldn't be a replacement for therapy you know there is arts therapy okay and that's entirely different um the true colors program and other arts programs that might be similar appear to provide a space for the young people to thrive um as one person in the study mentioned it was a space for them to come out from under the water such a beautiful metaphor okay um and it was specifically that combination of being a theater space for artistic expression as well as being the safe space um to be gay queer trans or however the young people identify um that creates that freedom to be creative and to grow um so if youth are depressed um the depression doesn't appear to get worse in this space um and if you're dealing with low self-esteem the self-esteem grows gets better or it stays high now of course this is just one program and we only observed it across um one year of programming so three seasons so more research is needed you know you take a risk in doing evaluation um it can show the ways in which your program is helping and also the ways in which the program might be maintaining or maybe falling short of what you thought your program is doing um in this case um what the evaluation showed is wow this program really is providing a space for the youth to thrive um in some cases survive um a lot of the stressors that they're dealing with um and from a youth development perspective you know these are artists artists who are dedicated in youth development these adult mentors and what they're finding is that look this is as far as we can go um as directors in this program but what more can we do to make sure that the youth who are um coming to our program are getting the help that they need you know we're not going to be mental health counselors um but what we could do is maybe partner with other organizations um in our community to make sure that the youth are coming here for an arts program or getting wrapped around care and as a researcher um I love working um with these programs because um you know all of us are invested in making sure that um you know LGBTQIA adolescents um are thriving um and you know thriving is not just the absence of depression it's um you know full maximal expression um of their creative selves so I wanted to read the full quote uh that Gerald mentioned about being underwater from a young person so this is Mark um I felt depressed because I felt like I couldn't really be who I wanted to be I knew who I wanted to be inside but I was like I can't be because she's gonna say something or he's gonna put his nose up at me but something happened when I was in True Colors that just opened my understanding and just brought me out like it was like I was underwater and coming to True Colors I got out of the water for some reason it's like wow okay I can do this I don't need to hide no more why was I hiding there's a quote here too that talks speaks to the mental health challenges and this is another participant that indicated that he had clinical depression but in this particular case his suicidality uh may not have reflected suicidal ideation measures but rather his understanding of how he was being treated by his foster parents who rejected him for being gay in his words Jaden indicated if I died no one would care because at the time that's the action I was receiving this quote really underscores the um and consistently high level of rejection some of the youth in True Colors endured while growing up or still indoor however it's important to note that some of the youth also reported being very supported by a family member and then in addition and perhaps no surprise to all of you one participant described theater as being a major release uh Mika says that the ritual and practice of learning the lines provides comfort and release she also indicates that rehearsal can allow her to process those feelings uh that she wasn't initially aware of so theater may be structured and safe space to feel and express emotions in this sense it could be a powerful tool to allow youth to process negative experiences develop insight and find healing and I love that the last part of this uh quote from Mika and I think it helps because if I hadn't released in class I probably would have brought it home and it just exploded so post research so given this research we've considered some more extreme responses like hiring a social worker on staff but we think that this would change the fundamental purpose of True Colors which youth have already said complements their current mental health care so here's how we short up and or improved our program so first on first on the list is the check-in process so that is immovable that is something that we will do with every single program is a check-in process it's a moment for young people to say what's going on their lives for a group of adults to shut up and hear what's going on their lot in their lives and try to uh do something about it so uh we have after rehearsal check-ins with young people or break check-ins with young people to see how they're doing and if they need additional supports and so if they do need additional supports they're referrals that we offer so the great thing about Boston is that there are lots of organizations that specifically serve LGBTQ youth we have a health clinic that's dedicated to LGBTQ youth called the Sydney Borum Health Center and there are other sibling organizations like the Boston Alliance for LGBTQ youth that they have a clinician on staff and they have a social worker on staff so I will physically walk a young person over so that I can say I am someone you trust this is someone I trust and that intro that introduction happens live and in person instead of just handing a piece of paper and crossing their finger my fingers that they'll actually go to seek the services so all of our youth workers will do that act of walking someone to the services that they need the last part of this is that we create a community resource guide for all of our staff so what we realized is that adult support is is essential and it can't just be the youth workers because young people are interacting with all of the staff and so we created a community resource guide in a pinch if a youth worker could not be accessed at a particular time then a staff person could go to this community resource guide that's on a shelf and electronic and find the resource that a young person would need of course we as youth workers are always try to be accessible it might be one in the learning yes youth work but to make sure that we're available to young people at all times and then finally what we realized is that a lot of this research supported what we learned in Biap so that funder who said go and get yourself a professional research ha ha we got the professional research and the researcher upheld what we learned in Biap so we were really happy about that so again the takeaways so if we hadn't been doing evaluation and assessment i think i would have been terrified to work with the researcher i kind of knew what the community was going through but didn't know for certain and so again this is an iterative process there's a place to start don't feel like you have to jump right in to working with a researcher program and improvement is the most important don't just be guided by what the funders are asking you to do program improvement is the most important in this process also the community based participatory research it helps maintain our values when we're working with researchers that's so important be specific so go back mama go back so engaging with so be specific so when engaging in this research be sure that you're finding that specific question come on center well i'll just go off the cuff here we go let's hope this isn't 20 minutes center design justice so again making sure that young people are the ones who are saying what they need and shaping that research it's really important and should be prioritized in all of your programs all of your programs we learned that theater does in fact have a deep impact on lgbtq youth and in their lives and finally don't forget research as part of a bigger picture and should not research should not dictate what you're doing with programs but it should complement it so that's it thank you so much for listening so um we do have a few minutes for questions if folks questions comments queries the one individual who was objecting to that initial research project did he change his mind no and that's why i emphasize don't do this for the funders do it for your own program improvement because the funders they i mean they have their job to do which is to put other hoops out for us right now that all of us have you know decided that evaluation is important and we're stretching ourselves to the limits they've just put the goalpost a little bit further right which is the way that it works uh other than centering uh youth voices in the research process can you talk about other ways that you uh centered design justice and um any other resources or things that you drew on um in regards to design justice specifically yeah well i think uh the for a very long time about 10 years mark h or h mark smith who i mentioned earlier um a lot of his work was about design justice if young people are not um designing alongside you then you're working in a bubble right and that the young people vote with their feet meaning your room is empty for rehearsal for a reason um and uh so that was instill that like that put the fear of god into me really at the very beginning of my career i really heard that and so um for us you know when we first started i my first uh true colors troop that i directed in 2001 there were four young people in it and there was a way in which one young person was saying i'd like to do more and so i said okay what do you want to do and she said well what if i were to stage manage and so we spent time in the office and i was teaching her how to do stage management and then uh another person said well i want to run sound right so year after year after year it was a matter of saying yes when young people want to do something they're telling you what they want to do and it's your job to listen in these moments and so in terms of that's kind of baked into the dna in boston we have a amazing training the um from the best initiative and uh it's a youth worker training they might have an online resource i'll have to check in with all with that and let you all know but um it's a youth worker training and it's to legitimize the field of youth work because 10 15 years ago people were like oh you just run an after school program that's nothing um and it was saying we want to create the structure and backbone so that youth are at the center of all of our work and um so that's that's a big resource that we've pulled from and again i think design justice is baked into really solidly good youth work questions yeah fey i really um just wanted to say i appreciate uplifting that the um the point of not replacing therapy can you talk a little bit more about how you juggled that feeling of um focusing in on your core competency as far as like the theater work versus the decision to not have a social worker on staff so it's something we still grapple with i mean every year it's like oh uh what what's going on right the resources are dwindling in most communities what resources youth have access to at those centers that i uh told you about you know one social worker is working with 32 young people um it's an intense prospect for that one social worker at bagley and um and they had to take a leave of absence for three months so then they had to shuffle young people to other uh other social workers in the meantime which is an just an impossible task so i think we still are wrestling with what what should we be doing here some of it is just financial strain right we can't pay a social worker what they should be paid and i think a lot of arts organizations would say that the other thing is we can't provide the supports we don't have the expertise to provide the supports for social workers so to pretend that we are an office that would support a social worker we would be lying to ourselves and it would be to the detriment of the young people which no one wants to walk into that where it's detrimental to the young people and to this social worker so i do think we still wrestle with it every single year um we have uh an increased need that's happening i think our political climate is bringing things to a crisis but it's always been a crisis for lgbtq youth and so um it it feels like it's every single day and it's not just family members that are doing this it's the whole you turn off on the tv and you can't get away from the oppressive nature of our world so um yeah it's something we still we still wrestle with i'll let you know if we make a change if we flip that coin all right i would like to have you all please join me in thanking eval and this is wonderful i just needed to bring my wife for technical assistance remind me to do that next time try to do that amazing research and a great setup for our day because you've touched on all the points that we're going to be going deeper into uh any minute now so i'm gonna have us move right into our next plenary panel but before that i have a housekeeping announcement for those of you who've been aching to find out the wi-fi