As she dropped her son off at the Berklee College of Music for the Five-Week Summer Performance Program, Dr. Kathleen Camara was amazed at the sight in front of the Berklee Performance Center.
"There were hundreds of young teenagers hanging out on Massachusetts Avenue arguing about music, carrying their bass guitars and all their instruments, and just talking and playing music on the street," she said.
This was a stark contrast to what Camara had read earlier that day in a Boston Globe article about the problems facing city youth in Boston, including gangs, violence and drugs.
Inspired by what she saw and curious as to why no one was writing about these youth who were participating in the summer music program, Camara, an associate professor of child development in Tufts' School of Arts and Sciences, reached out to the administrators at Berklee College of Music and expressed her interest in working with them.
Camara learned that Berklee was seeking external evaluation for their City Music program. The Berklee City Music program, along with its network sites around the country, runs summer and year-round programs that provide contemporary music education to youth from underprivileged communities throughout the country.
Students attend the program with no cost to their families, receiving scholarships and donations from community members.
The newfound collaboration between Camara and Berklee led to the foundation of YouthBEAT, a research and evaluation project on arts and development, which is run through Tufts and directed by Camara.
Camara and the Berklee worked together for several years before the research project was ready to begin.
"We worked from 2006 to 2008 planning the project and talking about what questions [the teachers and administrators at Berklee] wanted to have answered and questions I thought would be important to find out about youth development," Camara said. "We were both in agreement that the project would really be one that focused on positive youth development, meaning that we were looking at the strengths of youngsters [who came to the program.]"
According to the YouthBEAT statistics provided by Camara, the study has collected data from 764 participants, including "youth, families, staff and community members at seven sites in Boston, Anaheim, Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Philadelphia and Phoenix." The project uses methods involving face-to-face interviews, research instruments, and questionnaires.
The research staff has also "conducted over 2,000 hours of observations at the Boston and network sites of musicianship and theory classes, ensemble rehearsals, special events and performances," Camara reported.
According to Camara, YouthBEAT studies participants' "leadership, social skills, musical achievement, academic achievement, sense of purpose, musical and cultural identify, self-esteem and perceived confidence in a number of different areas."
Through this research, Camara and the Tufts YouthBEAT team of both undergraduate and graduate student researchers have been able to follow the success of students who participate in the program.
While the program focuses on music, it also "helps [students] prepare scholarship applications and college applications," Camara said.
Participating students are also influenced by the program's location on a college campus, at Berklee.
According to an informational brochure published by the Berklee College of Music about the collaboration between Tufts YouthBEAT research and Berklee City Music, "96% of the City Music students interviewed reported that they wanted and expected to go on to college."
"[They] get a little bit of a sample of what college life is and even if they're from a family that has never gone to college or doesn't have that kind of experience, [the students] now see something that opens up opportunities for them and many of these students see this as an opportunity and they get excited about it," Camara said. "All of the sudden, we see in 10th and 11th grade, [participants'] grades start getting a little bit better in school."
Tamara Win (LA '14), who worked as an undergraduate research assistant for YouthBEAT for several years, echoed similar sentiments about the influential impact of a sense of community on the participants.
"I felt like a lot of the community they felt from music resonated with me because that is the way I felt," she said. "It was moving to see my own similar experiences mirrored in the way these students were interacting with their music programs."
Win and Gabriel Rothman, a senior, both remarked on the rewarding aspects of being involved in the program. For Rothman, a visit to the Chicago network site was one of the most gratifying parts of his time spent at YouthBEAT.
"We went on a site visit in June to one of the programs in Chicago," Rothman said. "And I got to go to the site with [Camara] and sit in on the program and talk to students and staff — that was a really cool experience."
Tufts students like Win and Rothman have been very involved in YouthBEAT, and some have even continued to be a part of the project after they have graduated.
"We have been fortunate to have so many Tufts students participating in the YouthBEAT research projects," Camara said in an email. "Over 120 graduate and undergraduate students have participated as observers, interviewers, coders and analysts over the past six years. Many who have graduated have gone on to become research assistants and coordinators, program evaluators, and administrators in arts organizations or have entered into doctoral programs."
Under the direction of Camara, along with the help of Tufts undergraduate and graduate assistants and Berklee, YouthBEAT has been able to grow and expand. Looking to the future, Camara is excited about Amp Up NYC, a new project that is developing in collaboration with Berklee and Little Kids Rock.
"Basically, they are going to be providing the kind of music program that Little Kids Rock has been doing across the county," Camara said. "They are introducing modern band, which is sort of a rock music and contemporary music, to youth and in this program they are working with teachers in New York City schools, teaching them how to teach music in ways that do not necessarily rely on reading music, but really have to do with listening to sounds, creating improvisational music and creating music through aural means."
The program will use a music learning program created by Berklee called PULSE, which can be accessed through the Internet and provides online lessons and materials about theory, music history and the background of the songs they are learning. YouthBEAT will also be a part of the collaboration in gathering information to evaluate the program, according to Camara.
Camara expressed optimism about the project, as well as YouthBEAT's goals for the upcoming year.
"This year we will be completing analyses of our data, and will be sharing with the professional community some of the positive outcomes we have identified from our analyses of youth participation in these programs," she said in an email. "Our work has already been presented at several national and international conferences and our findings thus far demonstrate the importance of involvement in music and other arts for youth development."
