Urban Academy

More from the teens featured in this segment:

"The more art classes I take the more it kinda let's me look at the world at a different view. Like I see the art in things." --Simon

"I think art helped me to express myself. When I took this class, I became very interested and the way it helped me put ideas out and experience new things. I was very happy with the response from people. I really loved it that they loved it. It just made me realize some things. Like how I was into ceramics and how much I loved sculpture. I just learned how art is about everything. I mean, even when I do these pots and sculptures, it has so many elements from other things. I was set on becoming a doctor, but now that I learned ceramics and how to do ceramics, I understand that there are other things you can experience as well. I think it's a way to open your eyes to new things. I think it'll help young people in their own ways. It helped me differently and it can work differently for other teens. It's stability, because anywhere I go I can do ceramics. If I move back to Mongolia, if I stay here, when I go to college, I can do that. Since I move around a lot, taking things with you is very important. I'm still planning on becoming a doctor; I've been interested in medicine for a while. But that doesn't necessarily mean I should stop doing it, because it's my hobby, it's something I like to do." --Crystal

"It's very therapeutic; whenever I have problems, I just draw. It's so helpful. A lot of schools now, they just wanna build you up for tests, but personally I'm very bad at taking tests. But visually, I can do a lot of different visual arts and crafts. So I think art should definitely be incorporated in every school because there's so many different people." --Peter

"I learned that when I put my mind to it I can do it. I put my mind into these paintings and I'm seeing that they look nice, and I see that if I keep painting, I'm going to get better at it. And I see a big development looking at these pictures. I would say to just try it. Give it a try. Just come and put your effort into it and I know for sure that you're going to see something and you're going to like it, and you are just going to go forward with that. Before, I didn't like art at all. It did change my attitude. When I came here I was like, 'I'm not going to get into the art proficiency program,' and stuff like that. Now that I'm doing stuff like this I'm like wow, I'm close. I learned so much." --Nells

"I think I would say to someone who says art isn't important, 'Come take an art class and see what you think. Try to imagine the world with no pictures and no color. Imagine that and then imagine taking away art from little kids.' It deprives you of going somewhere with yourself. It kinda deprives you of being able to get deeper with yourself. When you're doing art you're expressing feelings, and when you're writing you're expressing feelings. If you can do a painting with a brush, you could do writing with a pencil. So they kind of go hand in hand and they kind of feed off each other. It's hard at first to accept what people say, but then you start noticing that it can work. There's things you can change and evolve about your work. It helps to have a class full of people who don't normally look at art and look at it and tell you what they think. Through doing art you get to know yourself. In our minds we kind of lock things up, we don't really wanna talk about them or we don't really want to discuss them. But if you start drawing something, things are gonna come out. You're gonna have to confront certain things, you're gonna have to see certain things and a lot of times you discover things about yourself you never knew." --April

April's doll project:

I met a child with button eyes
Innocent limbs and a torn smile
Her dress was made of ashes
Her skin was charred the color of a broken heart
I met a child who lived inside me
She was innocent.