Art powers child development, says researcher Wright

Gisele Rucker

“When you’re young, you discover what you’re good at,” says Robin Wright, Professor of Social Work at University of Windsor. “I was great with kids.”

Canada’s top researcher in the impact of arts participation on youth development, Wright determined effective ways to recruit and engage youth in community-based arts programs. As co-investigator of the National Arts and Youth Demonstration Program (NAYDP) with her husband, Dr. Lindsay John, she concluded kids participating in structured arts activities gain increased confidence, improved interpersonal and conflict resolution skills, improved problem solving skills, and skills in arts activities.

Graduating from Toronto’s Humber Community College with a Child and Youth Worker Diploma, she capitalized on what she learned as a playground supervisor in Hamilton’s poorer neighbourhoods and in Toronto’s housing projects. Her focus was “disturbed children” – a term used in the 1960s to describe children with acute emotional and behavioural problems. She’d been working for 15 years in treatment centres in Toronto and Hamilton, as well as in schools with teachers as a team leader, before she pursued a university degree in social work at McMaster University.

“We know so much more now than before,” she says. “Then, no one was talking about abuse, sexual violence, or domestic violence. It got on the table when Trudeau brought in the divorce laws, which made it easier for women not to be chattel. Recognizing women’s rights made getting a divorce easier. There were strong social policies to support women and children, better than what had previously been in place.”

For her degree Wright researched “the kinds of programs to build and have in place in the school system as interventions to prevent students dropping out of school, antisocial behaviour, and violence, and to increase academic achievement.” Her doctoral study subsequently showed slight behavioural improvements with interventions like classroom management, cooperative learning, peer tutoring and mentoring.

When she was hired at McGill, she aimed at longer term prevention programs that could provide models for positive youth development. With support from the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation and public funding, she gathered a research team to conduct the National Arts and Youth Demonstration Program to gauge how effective arts programs are in enhancing the life chances of children and youth in lower-income communities. The three-year study in five Canadian sites showed that community-based organizations could successfully recruit, engage and sustain the participation of children and youth in structured arts programs, and that the children involved in displayed greater pro-social behaviours and self-awareness. It also showed positive impact on school performance and on the children’s families and communities.

Her current work is in assessing the impact of the arts experience on children who participated in the NAYDP in 2001. If they’ve retained positive outcomes, Wright hopes the results will help futher promote and expand community-based arts intervention for children everywhere.

Info: mcgill.ca/naydp

Gisele Rucker is the Director of the Academy at the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts.