The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston runs a ‘Teen Night’ which combines art, socialising and a sense of shared ownership of the event.
It started out with one wild (alcohol free) party with music, dancing and general socialising. Gallery staff were on hand to answer questions about the art, but the primary goal seems to have been to get young people in the door.
It has evolved into a quarterly event that is conceived, promoted, and run by teens, employing short programs inspired by the collection. There have also been classes on video, weblogging, podcasting, digital photography, video boot camp, design graphics, t-shirt design, a DJ school, and an in-school writing program.
Started with a small group of teenagers in 2005, ICA is now drawing 300 to 450 young people per event and hitting its goal of engaging 2,500 teens annually, up from 700 in 2005.
More info from www.icateens.org
It would be great to hear if these is anything like this going on in Ireland – do let us know!
Aoife
In The Model in Sligo we have a very active group of young people that engage with our programs called Young Model. As a programme Young Mpodel has been running since 2006 and creates ways for young people in Sligo to engage directly with contemporary art, film and sound artists and create and curate their own work.
You can see the sort of things they’ve been up to here: http://www.modelart.ie/youngmodel.html
Their current project involves interviewing living artists from the prestigious Niland Art Collection to get a distinctly young view on the work- some great early results here too: http://sligomodelblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/a-sneak-preview-of-young-model-the-interview-project/