That day it was “Ologies with Alie Ward,” but on others when white noise overtakes the ability to plan through her day, Kelsey Kenny, a 27-year-old artist, ends up listening to her own silence in the midst of paper trimmers echoing across the large visual arts room. As she assembled the pile of cut papers – each an image of a planet with facts about their density and size – Kenny exclaimed, “Oh crap, I forgot to print Pluto.”
Kenny is a full-time teaching artist at A Reason To Survive, colloquially known as “ARTS.” For week two of their 10-week fall session, Kenny’s students will make a zine based on planets – a continuation of the project they started out with last week.
The zine project, based on her students’ willingness to participate, stems from Kenny’s hope that her kids are engaged enough for the class session.
“I’ll have a whole curriculum planned out and then, on a dime, it’s going to change because my kids are not feeling it…I want them to feel really proud of what they do,” Kenny said.
Kenny teaches two hour sessions with her students, who are in the ARTS 4 Justice program, a partnership between ARTS and Juvenile Court and Community School (JCCS). For credit, students in the south San Diego area aged between 13 and 18 years old come to participate in an effort to reduce systemic pressures and promote youth empowerment.
Participants vary from youth who have faced homelessness, family trauma, documentation issues, gang violence, teen pregnancy, neglect and abuse, among other areas of concern.
According to GreatSchools, San Diego County Court and San Diego County Community are both rated a 1/10 in college readiness and 2/10 in equity, with their demographics being largely more susceptible to systemic violence and injustice than their peers.
“None of us are licensed therapists, so it’s not really smart for us to market it that way even though we still do, I think, a lot of healing,” Kenny said. “I didn’t have a lot and my family wasn’t well-off in any kind of way, so that helped a lot.”
While Kenny started her role as a teaching artist with ARTS following the COVID-19 lockdown, her history with the non-profit started 13 years ago. She initially attended San Diego MET high school located in Mesa College, which provided students with twice-weekly internships tailored to their interests. While interning, Kenny also worked at ARTS, teaching children with autism or behavioral issues up to three classes a day.
“I just remember watching this one child who had sensory issues…he was drawing an excavator, and spelling out excavator, and just was super fascinated with excavators; he didn’t really vibe with me because I was a new person to him. But then, one of his counselors that came with them came over and told him, ‘Oh, how beautiful; that’s so good,’ and this kid’s face lit up like I’ve never seen…” Kenny said.
“I had to step away from the class and I went out to the back stairs and bawled my eyes out. I couldn’t believe I could be a part of something like this – even a little kid like me, who was running around, tagging and being crazy, because that was part of my environment when I was growing up – that whole day just shifted everything else,” Kenny said.
Kenny’s co-teacher for the ARTS 4 Justice program is Rob Tobin, her teacher at ARTS when she was 14-years-old. Tobin, also a full-time artist, still works with many of the youth he originally mentored as artistic partners for various projects outside. When Kenny moved back to San Diego, Tobin was the person who had persuaded her to join ARTS as a teaching artist.
“It’s amazing that she was able to find us and [that we found her] as an internship to give her direction in life. I think she’s taken full advantage of it,” Tobin said. “She’s used her creativity to overcome and form her own amazing life. She’s a great friend and almost-family member.”
One of Kenny’s memorable moments with ARTS happened later on in her internship that later led to her job as a full-time artist. ARTS provided opportunities to youth in the form of monthly art galleries that encouraged artistic exploration and monetary gain; she participated in an art gallery show in Liberty Station. With the profit from an almost sold out art show her senior year, Kenny was able to financially support herself in going to college in Oakland.
Kenny exclaimed, “There’s nothing better when you’re a kid who’s just falling into their style of art than to see it up on the wall with a price tag and a red dot. I said, ‘Oh my God, I sold something,’ like ‘I could do this. This is awesome!’...I mean – how much better of a memory could that be?”
While a career outside of ARTS has always been at the back of her mind, Kenny’s passion for inspiration through education, something gained by half of her life being spent at ARTS, has taught her to be grateful for the impact she leaves on her students and to continue to explore creatively. Her planetary zine lesson is her first ever attempt at making a zine with her JCCS students.
Although not as logistically ambitious as they were originally, ARTS 4 Justice classes and sessions for JCCS students are still largely transformative in the way they were originally for Kenny. In ways she was also guided through as a youth, Kenny takes her opportunity to teach and uses it to guide her students towards a less destructive path than the ones they are currently on.
“I would sit down, be able to create something and have complete control over something; that’s what I like to do with the kids,” Kenny said. “This is your clay. I’m not going to tell you what to do with it, as long as you’re not being inappropriate. Mold this into whatever – you can pinch it, punch it, pull it – whatever. But this is yours, so have it.”
Kenny continued, “I think it’s pretty incredible what these kids can do when they’re not dealing with all their baggage or all the prejudice against them, or stereotypes against them and all these things that they’re having to take in when they’re walking around in the world; and they get to just ‘be’ for a little bit.”
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