The Memphis Youth Arts Initiative (MYAI) is not your typical after-school group. On any given weekday afternoon, the facility’s parking lot is filled with a drumline practicing, majorettes dancing, and a color guard honing their craft.
Instructors and advisors from all walks of life observe the kids and guide them in making corrections as needed. Most of Memphis Youth Arts Initiative’s members do not go to the same school. In fact, most of them do not live in the same neighborhood, but they are all drawn together by the same goal as that of the group’s founder, Corey Travis — to create an accessible hub for music and performing arts in the city.
Travis founded the Memphis Youth Arts Initiative in July 2019, but his love of music and teaching extends far beyond that. Before founding the program, Travis had previously spent 10 years working to become a band director in his local school district.
“When I was working to be a band director, I spent a lot of time and money being told that I couldn’t do something that I knew I could,” he says. “I had to really wrestle with myself and push past a lot of personal barriers that were telling me that I couldn’t do it. I wanted to take the energy I had been putting into becoming a band director and put it into the community.”
Since its inception, the MYAI has grown to serve around 85 members, aged 6 to 17, and continues expanding its listing of music and performance options. Even with the difficulties mounted by COVID-19, the group has been able to remain around a constant 70 members and has not had a single COVID-19 case among them since mid-August. Travis attributes some of their success in operating during COVID to a general sense of understanding among the members.
“At our facility, we operate socially distanced, but really our members just get it. We don’t have to remind them over and over to be safe,” he says. “They want to be there. The hardest part for us right now is the size of our facility. If we have all the groups practicing at the same time, it becomes hard for groups to work without overlapping one another.”
Lack of performances due to COVID-19 has been a problem as well, says Travis. Because of venue restrictions and limits on the number of spectators for events, finding places for MYAI to perform has posed a challenge. Travis says the group has had to get creative.
“It’s been hard to keep the calendar full sometimes,” Travis says. “Recently, we have been taking groups out to perform and fundraise. I try to keep them busy and look for opportunities for them to perform.”
In the past, they have offered marching auxiliary band, urban dance, majorette, flag corps, color guard, and percussion ensemble classes but are looking to expand to theater and cheerleading. The plan going forward is to have the theater department create a performance as one of their annual productions and then leverage the other programs in MYAI to put those performances into motion.
MYAI is not just about music and performance. A big part of the program is fostering confidence and leadership skills. Participants are put in charge of running their parts of the band and given the opportunity to help make decisions on how performances should look. But this is only the beginning of Travis’ vision. MYAI is in the process of developing its student leadership program. In the program, students would be holistically examined and given leadership opportunities. These members would also be on a special leadership council.
MYAI also has a strong sense of tradition, despite the organization’s age. Their annual award ceremony is a large affair in which parents are honored for their contributions to the program, recognitions are given out to members, and a most improved boy and girl are chosen. MYAI also does a yearly trip out of state to allow members to experience a new city without having to perform or compete like they would during their band season.
When Travis thinks back on the process of forming MYAI, he says that although it was a long journey, sometimes things happen for a reason.
“Some of the stuff we do at MYAI, there is no way I could have gotten done at Shelby County Schools,” Travis reflects.
To read more about the Memphis Youth Arts Initiative programs, visit memphisyoutharts.org.