August, 2018 — The seeds for the Youth Arts Movement (YAM) were planted out of a barely functioning creative writing club in the midst of tech-savvy Silicon Valley. Inklings of a network, of a community of writers to collaborate and support each other blossomed from school libraries and quiet cafes. When YAM was incorporated in 2019, only Brook Chuang, Jonathan Li, and a quiet, flickering hope held its rickety frame together. Bureaucratic hoops and pressing expenses scraped away at splintering edges—internally it might even have fallen apart just a little—but through the first months it sailed through. With the organization intact, Ethan Lin, Isabella Lee, Linda Zhao, and Charlie Williams joined to assemble YAM’s founding team, a group of highschool students with a shared desire to support young artists.

    STEM and the Arts, entrepreneurship and self expression, to the founding members these were not mutually exclusive pursuits, not subjects at odds with one another. Yet the discrepancy with which they were perceived was unignorable. Artists ourselves and unified by a dedication towards providing students and other aspiring artists a platform for creative expression, we have long worked to uplift the Arts around the world. YAM grew from an organization nestled amongst the evergreens of Saratoga to a Movement with 21 chapters across the world. From India and Australia to Canada and the U.S., through it all we shared a unifying commonality: a love of art.

    Art is beauty, pure and simple. Every paint brush stroke is a marvel of human ingenuity, every flick of the pen a contribution to a larger illustration, every music note an essential droplet in a sea of symphony, every snap of the camera an immortalized moment, every word upon paper a component of a grander masterpiece. We as artists recognized this, even before the founding of our organization. If one lacks appreciation for art, however, the need to preserve it may be lost on them as well. Too often as students did we see the same story; young artists and writers taking a begrudged back seat with their accomplishments behind those of STEM students. From school funding to basic recognition, we realized a fundamental appreciation for art was missing from schools near and far from our founding place of Saratoga, CA. We founded the Youth Arts Movement as a response to such imbalance, seeking to showcase student artwork and provide opportunities to the young artists who needed it most.

    Heading our effort was our monthly speaker series events. Early on, we realized that teaching students about art was just as important as honoring their own work; what better way to improve one’s craft than to learn from esteemed, award-winning professionals? We set out to recruit artists, writers, and designers from Saratoga to Vancouver, holding virtual webinars and question panels for any who wished to attend.

    YAM’s mission is to support young artists. We do this by offering a platform to showcase their work, hosting speaker events with experts in their field, providing monetary support through our grant programs, and helping young artists with career development programs and internships. However, we knew that not everyone has equal access to art opportunities, and we wanted to do something about it. Arts Made Accessible (AMA) is a program founded with the intent of delivering basic arts supplies to kids in need. During Thanksgiving of 2020 we were able to donate 4,500 pieces of art supplies to City Team and San Jose Family Supportive Housing, and on Easter of 2021, we donated another 4,000 supplies to Eden Housing.

    We later partnered with Art Hub, an organization run by a group of high school students with a passion for art and inspiring others. Backing their informative online classes, we strove to bring teaching opportunities to those students who wished to expand their own skills. Along with Art Hub came our partnership with Key2music, a nonprofit that focuses on nurturing the love of music in underprivileged children and youth around the world through teaching string instruments. Our most recent partnership is with a silicon valley startup called Visva and a career development non profit in STEME. Through our collaboration, we seek to showcase how art and STEM are not at odds with each other and are equally necessary.

    Looking to the future, YAM still has a lot of work to do. Our reach continues to grow past the 300,000 people we’ve reached so far, and with it, the number of young artists being offered a platform for creative expression. We intend to continue our webinars, fundraisers, classes, and collaborations in the hope that our efforts bring Saratoga––and the world––a step closer to recognizing the beauty of student art.