Author Beth Rubenstein is founder and executive director of Out of Site: Center for Arts Education in San Francisco.
Working with teenagers, I think about what tools and skills they need to become happy, productive, independent twenty-somethings. How did we set ourselves up on a path to meaningful work and relationships? How did we figure out what we wanted to be and do when we grew up?
As little kids, asked what we want to be when we grow up, our answers reflect what we like to do (writing, dancing, soccer) or tangible professions we see (teacher or firefighter) or what our parent does. At this point, there is neither the need nor the ability to wonder, “How will I get there?” As a teenager and college student, many of us are daunted (I was) by that question, precisely because we have no idea how to get there. We may love or hate school, but what does it have to do with our adult lives?
And, what are our options as adults? Few teenagers or college students are exposed to the breadth of work possibilities. I watched many peers choose law, medicine, architecture, and business because the paths to those professions were clear. Those schools are, strangely, vocational: they teach you a trade that is marketable immediately after graduation. My English major friends knew that what they were learning was important, but it was unclear where they would go from there. It had to be invented.
Looking at my own path from my schooling to my work life, I see that the most important role models, besides my parents, were my teachers. They taught me the keys to becoming an adult. My high school teachers taught me how to look critically at things and to wonder about the world around me. My architecture professors opened a door to a complex and deep way of seeing the world. Architecture for me embodies a brilliant symbiosis between ideas and physicality, between the abstract and the concrete. Architecture is inherently multi-disciplinary: it creates webs of meanings and connections among history, science, art, and anthropology. This combination speaks to me.
In graduate school, not only was I learning about architectural ideas and design, but I was also watching my teachers teach. I wondered about learning. How do you create an environment where learning can happen—where intellectual risk, experimentation, and personal insights are valued? In my second year, I became a teaching assistant in the college classes. As I graduated and continued my teaching, I worked for a professor who was an inspiring teacher and designer. For him, there was a fluidity between making and teaching; they easily informed each other.
After school, I developed a small practice that focused on community projects, while at the same time I taught at the college level. I was drawn to architectural projects that had impact on a community of people. Many of my projects involved design and building, and they never felt that different from my classroom/studios. I was a learner and a teacher in both situations.
As important as all my jobs through my twenties and thirties is the way my architectural education has shaped the way I see the world. Whether I am designing a project or not, I always feel like I see the world as an architect. I look for the relationships between the built world and people’s experience; I wonder about how our built environment supports us, speaks for us, and oppresses us; and I look for ways in which we can redesign and reshape our place so it reflects the future we want.
This way of thinking led me five years ago to cofound in San Francisco a nonprofit arts education organization— Out of Site: Center for Arts Education—that works exclusively with public high schools. I was looking for a way to weave my educational beliefs and my architectural view of the world together: the mission of Out of Site reflects this. Teenagers are in the midst of forming themselves. They need to see how their l earning can be relevant; they need to be challenged and supported to find their own voice; and they need experience in architecture and the arts so that they can better understand the world. Out of Site’s programs support and nourish young women’s and men’s intellectual and emotional growth.
Creating Out of Site is an expression of my belief in the transformative power of education and the transformative power of art and architecture. To invent something—whether it is a building or an organization or a relationship—you need to be tenacious and curious. To invent something is to have a view of the future.
The mission of Out of Site is
– to DEVELOP new models of teaching and thinking about the arts at the high school level,
– to INSPIRE community engagement and activism by participating in the world through the creation of art, and
– to CREATE connections among communities through programs that are diverse in their participants and their content and teaching methods.
For more information, visit the website of Youth Art Exchange, the successor organization to Out of Site.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2005, in arcCA 05.2, “Other Business.”
