Color, Design, and Creativity in NYC Public Schools
Publicolor is a creative way to engage at-risk youth in their education and communities. Using color, design, and the marketable skill of commercial painting, disadvantaged, underachieving students paint their schools in bright, warm colors. As they transform their schools, however, they also transform themselves. Publicolor literally takes at-risk students from paint can to college.
About You
Section 1: You
First Name
Ruth
Last Name
Shuman
Website URL
Organization
Publicolor
Country
United States, NY
Section 2: Your Organization
Organization Name
Publicolor
Organization Website
Organization Phone
2122136121
Organization Address
149 Madison Avenue, Suite 1201, NY NY 10016
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Organization Country
United States, NY
Your idea
Name Your Project
Color, Design, and Creativity in NYC Public Schools
Country and state your work focuses on
United States, NY
Describe Your Idea
Publicolor is a creative way to engage at-risk youth in their education and communities. Using color, design, and the marketable skill of commercial painting, disadvantaged, underachieving students paint their schools in bright, warm colors. As they transform their schools, however, they also transform themselves. Publicolor literally takes at-risk students from paint can to college.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
We use the scaffolding of product design to teach at-risk inner-city students literacy and numeracy, as well as critical thinking skills. In the process of painting their schools and nearby community facilities, students acquire strong work habits, including creative problem solving, leadership training, and team building, all of which are transferable to success in school, career, and life. Paint Club, the first tier in our continuum of after-school programs, is unique in that 100% of our students’ work impacts 100% of the school community, and 100% of our students are involved in service projects that revitalize their schools and communities. All five of our programs are anchored around high expectations and the belief that when underachieving students experience daily successes, they build the self-confidence necessary to achieve more in all areas of their life. During those key after-school hours, when youth are more likely to engage in unhealthy behavior, Publicolor students are involved in rewarding enrichment activities and stay connected to their education. The students we work with face wrenching challenges, ranging from special education needs and functional illiteracy to domestic violence and abuse, homelessness, and difficulties with anger management. Publicolor provides these students a safe haven and, in many cases, their only source of positive encouragement. Our goal is to create a better trained and educated workforce for our nation’s future. Deteriorated school environments result in undesirable outcomes, such as poor academic performance, behavioral issues, and student absenteeism. Publicolor responds by engaging at-risk students in the process of painting their schools, while also arranging for corporate employees to volunteer with us so they can tutor and mentor our youth, which provides strong mentor relationships and academic help.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Since 1996, Publicolor has brought about significant change to some of NYC's most underserved communities in a variety of ways including:
• 116 huge inner-city schools revived through Publicolor’s commitment to educating our youth through commercial painting with emphasis on community-building, strong work habits and critical life skills;
• 135 community buildings instilled with a new sense of dignity and transformed from drab, depressing facilities to essential neighborhood hubs;
• 12,000 students and teachers Publicolor impacted annually by the warm, welcoming design of their schools;
• 1,200 at-risk students directly involved with Publicolor annually on a path to realizing their potential;
• 35,000 disengaged, failing, low-income middle and high school students directly impacted by Publicoloring their schools and creating a sense of pride and community;
• 500,000+ residents of low-income neighborhoods impacted by the dignity and inspiration of good design by Publicolor to date;
• 90% of the teachers reported higher expectations of the Publicolor students after seeing them involved and committed to a huge school-wide project. This is a home run for us, as higher expectations are key to better performance;
• Last year, 86% of Publicolor students graduated from high school on time—compared to 42% of their peers—and 100% of them went to college. Nationally, only 47% of students with backgrounds similar to Publicolor students go to college;
• 53 Publicolor students are currently enrolled in college; eight more are college graduates, three of whom are in graduate school;
• 65% of our college students use the commercial painting skills they learned with us to help defray college costs;
• Last year, 99% of the Publicolor students did not drop out of school.
Problem
American students rank 15th in reading, 23rd in science and 24th in math amongst 29 developed countries. Nationally, more than 1.2 million students drop out of high school every year with devastating consequences to them, our society, our economy, and civic life. Today, 1 in 100 Americans is in prison at an annual cost of $44 billion for incarceration alone; 82% of them are high school dropouts. Nationally, there are four million young people out of school and not looking for jobs because they lack the most basic skills needed to enter the workforce. From a business point of view, these figures reflect low productivity, and the alarming prospect of a third-world workforce. The economic consequences are just as bleak. College graduates earn on average $1 million more over a lifetime than high school dropouts do; and dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost our economy $329 billion in lost income, lost taxes, and lost productivity. If we don’t act to rectify that and our dropout rate remains the same for the next 10 years, the result will be a loss to the nation of $3 trillion.
Actions
Our continuum of youth development programs, which includes Paint Club, COLOR Club, Next Steps, Next Steps Prep, and Publicolor/NYC Service Scholarship Fund, responds to at-risk students' specific needs. Publicolor targets NYC's most underserved communities throughout the five boroughs and works only with the most under-performing schools and the most seriously at-risk students. Over 90% of participants in all Publicolor programs come from families receiving public assistance, nearly all are eligible for free lunch and many are first-generation Americans. As they graduate from Paint Club, students are inducted into the rest of our programs, the ultimate objective being to support them to enroll in and graduate from college. In COLOR Club students are exposed to career exposure/life skills workshops organized into industry-centric modules, which allow students to explore different career paths and the skills needed in each. Already equipped with the tools necessary to succeed, students then move to Next Steps, a three-day-week program focused on tutoring and career workshops. The scholarship fund, which averages $5,000 per student per year, covers the real costs of attending college
Results
The ripple effect of supporting students as they apply for colleges is far greater: by raising expectations, our programs do not only impact our students' lives, they impact their families' lives, too. Out of the total number of recently surveyed teachers, 90% of them reported that their expectations of participants improved since the beginning of the transformation after seeing them productively engaged in a school-wide service initiative. Policy Studies Associates, a nationally renowned expert in youth development evaluation, conducted an in-depth evaluation and measure the effectiveness of our COLOR Club and Next Steps programs. The following are some of their findings:
- Student participation levels were high. Most participants reported a feeling of belonging to the program, and those students tended to have high attendance rates in school. In fact, 80% of participants reported that Publicolor helped them understand the importance of education, and a majority reported that the program helped them come to school more often;
- On average, participants reported high levels of academic benefit, motivation, and aspiration.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
Over the next three years, we plan to expand Publicolor’s reach to serve more struggling students and communities in New York City and adjacent cities. More and more at-risk students are seeking our continuum of youth development programs due to greater family pressures caused by this economy, and we are diligently looking for funding so we can accommodate this growing demand. We can no longer afford an undereducated workforce and we, at Publicolor, are committed to guiding at-risk students toward a productive future. Our growth, however, is highly reliant on assuring the proper expansion funds. We are currently in the process of 1) developing comprehensive fundraising campaigns that would expand the base of smaller donors; 2) restructuring the website so we can develop our web fundraising initiatives; 3) developing and launching partnerships with companies that would be able to offer our students internships and/or apprenticeship programs; and 4) expanding our reach by transforming 12 schools per year.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
The main obstacle would be the securing of necessary funds.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
In what country?
United States, NY
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Publicolor
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Publicolor believes in partnerships and cooperation with NGOs, businesses, and government for the benefit of inner-city at-risk students. As concrete examples, we work with New York Cares for engaging volunteers with whom we work every Saturday during the academic year as part the painting process. We also collaborate with Pratt Institute for Next Steps Prep, our seven-week summer program that enrolls approximately 70 at-risk students performing two or more years below grade level. Our students spent Monday through Thursday mornings at Pratt Institute enrolled in educational enrichment classes and SAT prep workshops. We also partner with businesses that make in-kind donations and collaborate with us by sending their employees to volunteer with the Paint Club program. In an attempt to maximize our reach, in addition to community sites and schools, we also transform police precincts as our way of closing the communication gap between police officers and youth living in disadvantaged areas of our city.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
Our number one priority is to secure the much-needed funds and expand the donor base for the growth of our programs and for welcoming more at-risk students into the Publicolor family. Attempting to bring Publicolor to other neglected urban areas in our country, we are also strategizing around the organizational growth needed to replicate the programs in areas within an hour's drive of New York City. Our third priority is to continue the evaluation of our programs by independent organizations focused on analyzing youth development curricula. As part of that, we are always focused on bettering the effectiveness of our programs and on gathering data around our impact.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
While visiting a public school almost 17 years ago, Ruth Lande Shuman realized that too many of our schools look and feel like prisons. Knowing that threat, stress, and anxiety are critically affecting students’ working memory, she then founded Publicolor to use the power of color, collaboration, design, and the discipline of commercial painting to engage at-risk students in their education. Our work is created around the concept that safe havens can undo this psychological damage. The results confirm our theory: teachers' and students’ reports of feeling safer in Publicolored schools are central to our effectiveness. With minds no longer frozen by fear, teachers can finally teach, and students can finally learn.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Ruth Lande Shuman, founder and president of Publicolor, is an industrial designer who uses color and design to transform public spaces. She is deeply committed to empowering urban youth and community members to enliven their underserved neighborhoods. In 1996, she founded Publicolor, a not-for profit organization, as a creative solution to the problem of the rising drop-out rate in our country’s public schools. Ms. Lande Shuman received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and completed her MSID at Pratt Institute, where she also did a six-month independent study on the psychological effects of color. Prior to founding Publicolor she was a founding trustee of the Big Apple Circus and today is one of its few emeritus board members. She is a former trustee of the Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund at Pratt Institute and the Women's Council at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a member of the Union Free School Board of the Wiltwyck School in Ossining, N.Y. She is currently a board member of The Kitchen, a preeminent presenter of contemporary performing arts, and the Mayor’s Voluntary Action Center. She is also Mayor Bloomberg’s representative to the board of the Museum of Art + Design. Prior to Publicolor, Ms. Lande Shuman assisted Gaetano Pesce on projects in Japan and France, and coordinated a large design exhibition and the accompanying award-winning Abrams book, "Mondo Materialis," for Steelcase Design Partnership.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
50 words or fewer
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 | 160 weeks ago Alexis Ditkowsky said: Hi Ruth, I really liked how Publicolor engages students in their educational environments and how a range of programs are offered. ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 165 weeks ago Robert Ion updated this Competition Entry. |
| 165 weeks ago Robert Ion submitted this idea. |
