Wisconsin Experience: Campus-Youth Partnership
The Office of the Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer is partnering with the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County to share the Creative and Performing Arts studio, a cutting-edge sound-recording studio.
UW–Madison students will help the club’s young participants create projects, while nurturing their own talents.
“This strategic partnership will allow us to leverage some of the talent that we have in our diversity scholarship programs to work with local youth on developing their artistic, academic, and leadership skills,” says Damon Williams, the university’s vice provost and chief diversity officer.
The studio will provide a location for summer-session workshops for middle school students offered by the UW’s Precollege Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE). On site at the Boys and Girls Club, the partnership will bring in several scholars from the university’s First Wave Hip-Hop Arts Learning Community and other talented university students; they will serve as community-based creativity partnership interns to work with the club’s youth. A final component is dedicated access and recording time in the studio for First Wave.
“I’m excited about the collaboration between the University of Wisconsin and the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County. The opportunities and experiences it will provide and offer our young people are endless,” says Michael Johnson, the club’s chief executive officer. “Bridging creativity and community all together is an amazing combination — a true celebration of cross-learning for kids and certainly for students of the university.”