Linking youth with the arts, journalism, and each other across Louisville's 
metropolitan area.

Arts Bureau Edge allows young people to influence the world by convening and educating high school students in multi-media arts journalism. The organization gives them a platform for their voices in the metro area while also making them more aware of the creative forces around them. 

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While linking them directly with the community’s arts, Arts Bureau Edge also works to prepare them for the workforce, college and living in our technological culture of the 21st century. 

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Through free workshops, Arts Bureau Edge promotes critical and creative thinking to empower young people. The workshops include attending arts events, meeting with and talking with artists and arts leaders, learning about writing about the arts and creativity as well as the process and other finer points of reporting and writing, and producing original content for the Arts Bureau Edge digital publication.

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History

This initiative began in June 2018, when a group of young people covered Floyd Central High School’s production of “Newsies” before the cast went on to perform the musical at the Educational Theater Association’s Thespian Festival in Nebraska.

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Over the following year, teens from diverse area high schools participated in four other pilot projects covering touring Broadway musicals, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays. They learned about performing arts offered in Louisville, talked with the national and local artists and arts leaders who make it possible to learn about how they approach their work. Professional journalists (writers and photographers) also worked with the young journalists to get their work ready for publication in this collaborative endeavor, through which LEO Weekly published their articles and photographs.

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In a survey, 70% of respondents said they would recommend the program and nearly 60% said they thought it would help them in school.

 

One wrote, “I had a great experience meeting others

from around the region who were interested in similar things. I also enjoyed writing a piece on a subject that I felt was important and mattered.”

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PHOTO: The cast of "We've Come to Believe," part of Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2019 Humana Festival of New American Plays. Photo by Jonathan Roberts.