A homeless man sitting on a park bench. A single mom searching for work. Foster kids waiting for new homes.
At a small dance studio in East Nashville, young children are rehearsing these scenes from a play, and in the process, nurturing their creative talents and learning about social justice.
CreateAffect, a weeklong summer camp for children ages 5-11, educates kids about social justice issues like homelessness and modern-day slavery, while supporting the artistic community and teaching kids to express their creative side.
CreateAffect Founder Abby Wahlers said she’s seen the kids come alive as they learn the positive impact they can have on the world.
“A lot of kids came alive when they realized that what they were doing was making a difference,” she said. “They see that impact, and they flourish and come alive; and they want to do it more and more. Seeing that makes me come alive and makes me want to do more, and I love it. I love that cycle.”
Wahlers, who has degrees in elementary education and human development from Wheelock College in Boston, said she thinks it’s important to teach children about social justice so that they more fully develop their innate empathy.
“I think we’re all born with the capability to empathize,” she said. “We’re born with it, but I think along the way, we lose it. But these kids still have it. There are so many areas in their lives where they don’t get to choose, and they don’t get to be a force or to make a difference or to have an impact. When they’re able to reach out and see the difference they’ve made, as a 7 year old or as a 10 year old, it gives them the power to be something or to do something important that they don’t get to have a lot in the way that our lives are set up.”
The camp, which meets from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each weekday at DancEast, involves a mix of field trips, craft projects, creative arts activities and workshops with professional artists of all types—actors and actresses, nutritionists, painters, photographers and musicians. The week culminates in a final musical performance and art gallery/silent auction for parents and friends on Fridays.
Each week the children decide what to do with the money raised from performance admission and silent auction sales. This week, in conjunction with the theme of homelessness, the campers chose to donate half of the money to Safe Haven, a shelter for homeless families, and the other half will pay for food and rent for Stacey and Michael “Bama” Farley, two vendors for The Contributor, who shared their story with the kids earlier in the week.
Wahlers said it was a special moment to watch the kids tell the Farleys about their plan on Wednesday.
“When they told the Farleys that, it was just like the sweetest moment in my life, I think, other than having my child,” said Wahlers, mom to 2-year-old Max. “The Farleys’ faces lit up when we got there. The kids were psyched to tell them.”
In addition to homelessness, the kids have studied fair trade and later in the summer will learn about modern-day slavery and caring for refugees and new citizens.
Wahlers, who teaches part time at Woodmont Christian Preschool, developed the idea for CreateAffect partially from her experiences as a teacher at East Academy, Nashville’s multiple intelligence school, which closed in 2010. She was also inspired to begin the program after attending an Art House America event at her church.
“A stagnant life isn’t living, and when you’re creating, you’re truly living life,” Wahlers said of her realization at the event. “I need to step out and live an artful life and do something that I am passionate about.”
Pairing art and social justice just made sense.
According to Wahlers, art allows the kids to express what they learn about social justice.
“They take whatever is in their mind and let it come out of their hands into that art and see the images they have in their minds come to life,” she said. “You can just tell that when they express it that way, they’re understanding it more. I feel like it’s also giving them a voice—whether it’s literally through their voice or through their artistic voice on paper—to show what they’re thinking and how it’s changing their minds.”
Wahlers said she plans to turn the camp into an after-school program that meets a couple of times each week in the fall. Looking farther into the future, Wahlers would like to expand the program even more.
“My long-term goal is to just do this, have this be my life—to have camps and start doing parallel camps with middle school and high schoolers,” Wahlers said. “It’s going to require other people who can help take the curriculum that I’m creating and turn it into an older kid curriculum. Very long term, I would love to take it into schools. I love the idea of being able to bring this into schools and once a week meet in certain classes and bring the arts and bring the social justice and then have them be able to go out into their communities and make a difference.”
Wahlers said she sees lots of opportunities for college students or community members to get involved.
“It would be amazing to be able to partner with a school or student teachers or interns who would be willing to help develop that and run it and go to different places than I’m going,” Wahlers said. “I would go to one site, and they would go to another site. I think there’s just so much that I could continue to develop and spread the message of the program and the curriculum if there were people who wanted to be involved.”
Wahlers said that if CreateAffect is going to grow in this way, she needs “people who are willing to support the cause and take it places that I might not be able to take it on my own.”
“I’m definitely going to need people who are willing to get on board with me, brainstorm, reach out into the community for resources,” she said. “Especially, people who are involved in social work or counseling, people who are able to think in ways that I am not trained to, as a teacher, but to think of ways that there are needs in the community.”
Wahlers said she would also need more artists of all types to join her cause. Not only does CreateAffect benefit the campers, but Wahlers, whose husband is a full-time musician, said it provides a way to support local artists and change the stigma that artists don’t have a “real job.”
“I feel like if I’m supporting the artistic community, that’s going to help our kids, if they grow up and want to be in the arts, the more we support the arts I think it’s going to be acceptable to have that as your career,” she explained. “There are so many kids who are meant for the arts, and I think those dreams get a little bit squashed. If we continually squash it, they never get to find their passion, and I want them to be able to.
“I want kids to understand that [expressing themselves through art] is something they can do and should do, and if they want to do it for a living, that’s cool too,” she said.
Wahlers said CreateAffect allows her to do what she’s truly passionate about, and she’s excited to see how her campers will change the world.
“I think it’s going to be amazing to see these kids grow into compassionate, empathetic, thoughtful teenagers and adults who are going to make such a bigger difference than people who are my age are making right now,” Wahlers said. “I think we’ve just lost focused on that. More and more, in East Nashville, I see people trying to get back to that, but why not just raise kids to think that way to begin with, instead of having to re-find that part of themselves later?
“When they’re at this age, not only do they still have the empathy, but they have the ability to actually do something about it,” she continued. “I feel like when we get older, we harden and get focused on the daily grind and we lose [empathy]. I really wanted to help kids find that passion now, so that later on, it’ll still be with them. It’ll just be a part of their lives. I feel like if we’re doing that with our kids now, it’ll pretty much change how we all are later on. When they grow up, their generation can make a huge difference in the world.”
For more information about camp this summer, click here.
Interested in supporting CreateAffect? Visit the “Sponsorships” page at createaffect.com.