ArtShow: Youth and Community Development

ArtShow, to be understood as "arts show how," constitutes a duo package of resource guide and documentary video. The resource guide summarizes the full resource project from which a focus on the linguistic and cognitive aspects of learning in the arts emerged. Nearly seven years into the research on youth organizations that Heath and McLaughlin began in 1987, Heath began to detect differences in the audiotapes of language used within the arts-focused groups; these were differences in degree and kind from the talk that went on in community-service and athletic-academic groups. [For more detail on these groups, see the resource guide.] From 1995 forward, Heath along with Adelma Roach and Elisabeth Soep, members of the research team, turned their attention to the minute-to-minute life of arts-based youth organizations. The findings are included in the resource guide as well as several public reports. They are portrayed as well in the documentary video, which describes four of these arts-centered organizations.

Given here are the Executive Summary of both the video and the resource guide. Other relevant articles are listed in Learning and Language Development.