YouthWrite

Last week I was teaching at the second week of YouthWrite, a fabulous writing camp held at Kamp Kiwanis outside Bragg Creek.

Not only was it wonderful to work with so many fine young writers, but spending time with the other instriuctors and the supervisors was also an unmitigated pleasure.

One of the most inspiring is Carolyn Pogue. She is firm in her belief that children can and will save the world, and she presents the many projects which have been youth-led and which are leading to positive change in our world. She makes me want to turn back the clock and become a kid again, but this time a kid who had the fortune to be in Carolyn's class. Encouraged to make a difference in whatever way I can, and shown that each individual can be an effective voice/force for change.

My fiction class was 15 of the most interesting and accomplished young people you're ever likely to meet. A week wasn't long enough. And everywhere you turned there were creative minds being challenged, and meeting the challenges, and it was awesome.

But then there were the ladies from Ipsos-Reid. One of whom was brand-new on the job. And they spent a day at the camp as part of an assessment being done of the programs supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

What is wrong with this picture: a highly successful program whose graduates are now out there making waves in the adult literary world, a program operated on a shoestring and only made possible by the dedication of the people who believe in it, is being assessed by two young women who revealed no background in the arts and who are not old enough to have a grounding in the history of these programs in Alberta.

This is part of a sweeping examination of the AFA programs. Again. The last time they went through this exercise, they had totally missed the challenges facing publishers (and subsequently we have seen several Alberta publishers fold or sold to out-of-province interests) and had made no provisions for service to our growing aboriginal population.

And why? Because instead of looking at what the people of Alberta need, they're busy navel-gazing about their programs. Some years ago the government cut the travel budgets of the consultants, so they can't go out there and find out who they're serving. The whole system has become about the board and the consultants talking to each other and evaluating the grants instead of being a proactive force behind the fostering of the arts in Alberta.

Instead of sending the ignorant to evaluate YouthWrite, they should have been sending Ipsos-Reid reps out to every school in the province to find out what the level of arts-related instruction is like. Instead of evaluating their grant program yet again, they should be sending ambassadors out to the small communities and to the reserves and reaching out so all Albertans understand that the Foundation is there to represent them and their interests. And then they might understand the value of a program like YouthWrite.

If you don't know the need, what is it you're evaluating?