Posted on: Sunday, November 3, 2002

Conferees weigh how art salvages young lives

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Yesterday at the Hawai'i Convention Center, Jonathan Katz, chief executive officer for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies in Washington, D.C., stepped from a session titled "Behind the Sunglasses" in Room 310 and headed straight to the panel discussion "Looking Toward the Rainbow" in Room 308.

"This meeting is about the convergence of things that don't seem to relate — youth at risk and public art," said Katz.

During the next hour and half, Katz, as moderator, and some four dozen audience members got an earful about the connection between art and troubled kids.

The panel discussion was one of many concurrent meetings and events taking place at "Hawai'i: the State of the Arts." The two-day conference hosted by Gov. Ben Cayetano and first lady Vicky Cayetano was the first such event here in more than three decades.

The purpose of the affair was to bring together people from arts, government and business organizations to address the role that culture and the arts play in everyday life.

The discussion in Room 308 was a case in point.

Panelist Kazu Fukuda was once an at-risk youth, running away from home at an early age, living a rough life on the Mainland and struggling to find his way. But through art, he found a focus that led him back to school and ultimately a graduate degree.

Today Fukuda is a recognized Hawai'i artist and educator who has helped others in similar predicaments change their lives through art.

Charlene Hosokawa, a Special Motivation teacher at Moanalua High School, said her 60 at-risk students are the kinds of kids who have parole officers and whom many teachers are glad to be rid of.

Yet Hosokawa has come to gain their trust through the arts, she said. In so doing, she has helped them — and herself — gain insight. One of the perks of being an at-risk teacher is that she has been given a rare glimpse into the creative universe of her students.

"From my point of view, all kids are at risk in our society and our education system today," said Warren Newman, former director of the Arts in Education Program for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Newman said educators know art can be a catalyst that leads troubled youth toward productive lives. Yet, too often, he said, society and the educational system thwart art in favor of academic subjects.

"We almost willingly produce at-risk students because we do not address what we know about the arts," he said.

However, Newman said Hawai'i, the first state to establish a public arts agency, could be a positive model for the nation.