What  we  do ,  and  why  we  do  it

We at TLP provide young people with meaningful and memorable experiences that stimulate self-reflection, encourage kindness, kindle environmental stewardship, spark curiosity and ultimately lead to self-discovery and personal growth, sometimes with life-changing results. We believe there are kernels of creativity within everyone and that our responsibility as artists is to expose youth to experiences that may help them recognize those kernels and nurture them to grow. One of the saddest things in life is for one’s creative capacity to remain dormant and undiscovered. Years ago, a second-grade student, Elise, said in her thank you letter to me: “It was very fun when we went on stage. It told me that I had a gift. It opened my heart. It felt like I discovered a gift of my own.”

This is not a likely sentiment to come from the pen of a seven-year-old girl, but come it did. And it supports the notion that our job as artists is to draw out of young people what they may not have known existed within themselves in the first place. Maybe one of those kernels will grow into a desire to perform again in some capacity before an audience, or to record music, or write poetry, or originate new forms of experimental theater. And maybe, just maybe, one will burst from its shell with such vivacity that to contain it would be unthinkable. Romantic? Maybe to some. But we’ve witnessed it time and time again.

Take Ryan for example, an eighth-grade boy from a rural town in New Hampshire. I met him in the spring during a Junk 2 Funk residency. We hit it off right away. Ryan would arrive to school early each day to help me set up for my workshops. He’d check in with me at lunch to see if I needed help with anything, and he’d stay after school to help me move things aside so that the basketball team (of which he was not a part) could play full court. He was such a likeable kid, in my mind a model student. At the conclusion of the residency, after helping me load the trailer, Ryan took my card and said he'd stay in touch. Only then did I learn from the music teacher that, before J2F, Ryan had not once arrived to school on time that year. He was in serious trouble at school for numerous offenses and was failing most of his classes. And worst of all, he didn’t care. Thank goodness she had the prudence to withhold this information from me until after the residency because sometimes a kid just needs a new gig, someone with whom he shares a clean slate, someone who presents an opportunity that he can succeed at.

There is something curious about the work we do that we can’t quite put our finger on because stories like this keep rolling in school by school, year after year. They all have different plots but similar endings.  It would be a delight to create some happy endings at your school too.  And we believe we can. That’s what keeps us moving forward.  That’s why we do what we do.