Kofa student represents Yuma on state’s arts council
During the 2020-2021 academic year, Kofa High School senior Marilyn Garcia Chavez has given Yuma a voice in the realm of the arts as she’s served on the Arizona Youth Arts Council, a two-year-old program housed by the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
Garcia is one of 15 creative decision-makers – not to mention the first and only representative for Yuma – advising the state’s arts commission on youth-focused grant programs and initiatives and advocating for equal access to arts programming for every young Arizonan.
“We’ve been really focusing on letting people know the value of youth voice, about young people stepping into leadership positions, about adults sharing power with young people,” said Elisa Radcliffe, the arts commission’s arts and learning program manager. “Young people’s voices are important and they have the ability to make a difference, not as leaders of the future but as leaders right now. It’s a project that’s youth-led; there might be adult accomplices, but the young people are driving the work.”
The group meets once a month via Zoom to learn about public policy, funding and granting as it relates to arts programs in Arizona and to ensure a youth-centered perspective always has a seat at that table.
“They’re giving us their expertise, letting us know what’s going in their communities, what arts and culture programs that service young people throughout the state look like and really giving us advice on how we should be writing our programs, especially those programs that directly affect young people,” said Radcliffe.
For Garcia, an Advance Placement (AP) studio art student at Kofa, the availability of secondary-level art programs – programs she’s advocating for on the council – assumed an essential role in bringing her to where she is today.
“(Art) has always been part of my life, though I didn’t really start developing it until high school because I just didn’t have the opportunities before,” she said. “When I entered high school, I had the materials to explore different mediums and the opportunities to apply to different scholarships and opportunities, and that really pushed me to keep doing art.”
With her position on the council, Garcia hopes to bring more awareness to the existing opportunities for students to explore and engage with the arts locally, all while making decisions that impact Yuma for the better.
“It feels great that people are trusting us to make
these big decisions for our own communities,” she said. “It makes me want to keep working hard to represent mine, and to keep bringing opportunities to my community so other students can also benefit from them.”
According to her art teacher Amy Seeley, none of this is out of character for Garcia.
“(Garcia) has always been a self-starter; she really takes the initiative to apply to those opportunities
that come up, and I wish more students would,” said Seeley. “Because she’s taken the initiative, she’s had more opportunities to learn and push her growth in terms of leadership.”
Throughout her high school career, Garcia’s work has been featured in local galleries, the Arizona Legislature Capitol and the Binational Clean Air Calendar, as well as in the United States Capitol, making her distinction as the winner of the 2019 Congressional
Art Competition for Arizona’s Third Congressional District. It was the latter opportunity, she said, that propelled her pursuit of programs and scholarships that would allow her to continue involving herself in the arts. These days, it’s the Arizona Youth Arts Council.
“I never really had the opportunity to be a leader, so I didn’t know that I could be one or that those opportunities were there,” said Garcia. “By experiencing being a leader and getting to know other students who also want to be leaders in their own communities, I want to keep being involved so that more opportunities are being highlighted to our community.”
One way the program prompts the council members to do that is through the creation of arts and media projects that highlight the arts in their local communities, as well as selecting artists and arts organizations residing in their region to award youth engagement grants, fostering their programs and initiatives that serve young people.
According to Radcliffe, the council has divided the state into five regions, with three council members representing each one. Part of the southern borderlands region, Garcia and her fellow advisors are tasked with researching and communicating with area artists and arts organizations who may benefit from the funding. Upon receiving the entities’ applications, the trio will review and determine together how and to whom the grants will be awarded.
“They’re getting the opportunity to sit on a formal grant panel to give them that experience so they know what it’s like,” Radcliffe said. “It’s our goal to get one grant into each of the regions that the young people represent.”
Youth engagement grants are available in the amount of $500, $1,000 and $1,500 at the council’s discretion.
“As a student, it gives you a taste of what it’s like to be a leader, and it pushes you to continue wanting to be involved in your community,” Garcia said. “It’s empowering for young people to be given this trust to be leaders; you don’t usually get placed in that high of a position as a student.”
Garcia plans to pursue a degree in industrial design next fall, paired with “a minor that involves something in Chicanos and Chicanas studies.”
“I want to keep developing my knowledge of helping and becoming a leader in my own community,” Garcia said. “That’s definitely something I want to explore in college.”
For more information on the Arizona Youth Arts Council, visit www.azarts. gov/azyac.