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"CHRYSALIS" - (krĭs′a-lĭs) - Noun
The safe, nurturing environment that enables a caterpillar to grow into a magnificent soaring butterfly
A safe, nurturing environment that helps a young person to develop into a thriving adult |
WHAT WE OFFER
We create healthy personal development experiences for young people, centered around a nurturing "chrysalis" environment, innovative play-based learning, customized experiences and training, inclusive programming, healthy content, and small united "family" groups with a general ratio of 15-25 students per 3-4 teachers.
We offer a dynamic range of activities including classes, camps, outreach experiences, theatre productions, and online learning resources.
We primarily serve students ages 8-18, so far mostly from the greater Silicon Valley area.
We offer a dynamic range of activities including classes, camps, outreach experiences, theatre productions, and online learning resources.
We primarily serve students ages 8-18, so far mostly from the greater Silicon Valley area.
Our primary goal is to help young people blossom and thrive, becoming happier, freer, more functional, more comfortable, more confident, more dynamic, more creative and able to overcome challenges, better at communicating and expressing themselves, better at interacting with other people in healthy ways and building them up, and generally becoming more and more the authentic wonderful people they were to made to be, shining their brightest and bringing out the best in those around them.
Our secondary goal is to help develop healthy creators; young artists of all types who use their gifts and passions to create goodness, truth, love, beauty, understanding, hope, and other positive impacts. Our experiences are designed to bring out the best in every single participant, building them up so that they can build up others.
Our experiences are specifically designed to impart and develop positive attributes, including creation, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, and affirmation.
Our experiences are also designed and operated to prevent destructive elements, including social hierarchies, cliques, gossip, bullying, unhealthy competition and comparison, self-loathing, exclusion, and inappropriate content.
Our secondary goal is to help develop healthy creators; young artists of all types who use their gifts and passions to create goodness, truth, love, beauty, understanding, hope, and other positive impacts. Our experiences are designed to bring out the best in every single participant, building them up so that they can build up others.
Our experiences are specifically designed to impart and develop positive attributes, including creation, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, and affirmation.
Our experiences are also designed and operated to prevent destructive elements, including social hierarchies, cliques, gossip, bullying, unhealthy competition and comparison, self-loathing, exclusion, and inappropriate content.
Our innovative business model has been developed through divine guidance by a team of people with combined decades of experience in the performing arts, youth development, education, youth ministry, business, parenting and foster care, professional development, and other specialized fields. Our methodology has also been inspired and influenced by the work of award-winning educators and youth development innovators, and some of the most impactful youth workers in history.
KEEP SCROLLING DOWN FOR MORE ABOUT OUR BUSINESS MODEL...
Creative | Inclusive | Nurturing | Affirming | Community-Building | Led By Faith
OUR APPROACH
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT VS PRODUCTION "PERFECTION"
While all youth arts programs aspire to build up young people, the traditional youth performing arts business model is ultimately based around two intertwined things that can inherently run contrary to that goal:
1. A hyper-competitive audition process that inherently favors the most talented and most privileged students, and those who fit the "look" directors want.
2. Impressing potential ticket buyers, donors, sponsors, and parents by prioritizing the quality of the show over the quality of the experience and impact for each individual student.
This approach has the natural consequence of disproportionately benefitting the top 10% of students, the ones who are the most naturally talented, the ones that are deemed the best looking, the most physically fit, etc.
The other 90% of the students get a lesser experience with less stage time, less time in the spotlight, less personalized instruction from staff, less praise and applause and awards and other affirmations, and less overall chances to grow beyond their current limits, while still being charged the same price.
This approach tends to create a destructively hierarchical, competitive, judgmental, and high-pressure environment, leaving many students wondering, "What's wrong with me? Why am I not good enough?" This model creates unfair and unrealistic standards of beauty, performance, and other metrics that people use to determine their worth in society.
Another flawed aspect of this business model is that students learn to follow direction but very little else. Directors and choreographers program every single movement and vocal inflection into students until students do it exactly the way the directors want night after night. This does produce a very neat, professional-looking show, but it utterly fails to nurture the full long-term potential in students.
Our program initially started with a healthier version of this business model, but over the course of our first five years, it quickly became clear that this model was deeply, disturbingly flawed, not in the best interests of our students, and that it clashed with our goals and commitments. With a lot of time, research, collaboration, and seeking divine guidance through prayer, a new business model was developed, which we are still building on to this day.
Our innovative new business model is based around one simple question, one all-important priority:
1. What is best for the healthy development of each and every one of our students?
The new business model that was created proved to be far healthier and more effective, bringing out the best in our students and our program as a whole. Students who were overlooked and under-developed at other programs came to Chrysalis, had their potential carefully nurtured, and then went on to thrive both at Chrysalis and at other theatre programs. Our students ended each production happier, healthier, more confident, more comfortable, and more free from self-consciousness and fear.
Here are a few of the elements we rely on to make that happen...
"CHRYSALIS" ENVIRONMENT - We strive to build and maintain a "chrysalis" environment and culture that provides a loving, nurturing experience to help people blossom and thrive, similar to how a physical chrysalis provides the right environment to help a caterpillar blossom into a butterfly. Our low-pressure, judgment-free, highly-affirming chrysalis environment enables people to engage fully and freely in the process of learning, developing, and creating, without being held back by fear or self-consciousness.
PLAY-BASED LEARNING - Our learning and development activities are based on the concept of play-based learning. We make learning so engaging and fun that students often don't even realize just how much they are growing! Making learning safe and fun makes it possible for us to help our students to stretch their limits and overcome challenges and take the next steps in their development in very healthy ways. Our students learn to make bold, instinctive creative choices, to learn from mistakes, to evaluate which choices are most effective, to communicate healthily and effectively, and to create collaboratively with other people of different ages, races, beliefs, and backgrounds. Over the course of their experience at Chrysalis, our students become more and more free from fear, self-consciousness, self-criticism, perfectionism, and other destructive mindsets. Our approach to play-based learning leads to creative arts students who are comfortable, confident, vibrant, authentic, skilled, dynamic, happy, and free.
MIXED AGE GROUPS - We value finding ways for people of differing ages and experience levels to learn and create together. We find that mixing age groups provides unique learning opportunities that are beneficial for everyone. This also eliminates some negative behaviors and cultures that can come with narrower age groups. Sometimes we even allow parents and local adult performers to perform in our shows along with our students.
SMALLER GROUPS, BIGGER IMPACT - We strive to include all students who wish to participate, but we place them into small groups with a general ratio of 15-30 students with 3-4 staff. This helps to ensure that every student has plenty of opportunities to learn, grow, and shine, and enables each group to develop a special sort of family bond. Smaller groups provide students with more personalized instruction from our staff, more stage time, more time in the spotlight, drastically less of the typical destructive competition and judgment, and more chances for our staff to notice and address the challenges that are keeping students from realizing their fullest potential.
CUSTOMIZED FOR ACCOMMODATION - Every Chrysalis experience is customized around each small group of participants, so we are able to accommodate a wide range of needs and provide a successful experience for a wide range of people. Our staff are constantly seeking to learn and grow and diversify their skillsets, and our leaders are always looking for ways to add new staff members who are uniquely qualified to serve particular groups of students.
INCLUSIVE PROGRAMMING - Our programming is specifically designed to be accessible and beneficial to young people of all races, abilities, experience levels, and incomes, and those of all different backgrounds and beliefs that can be safely accommodated without endangering our participants, our program, and our partner organizations and facilities. If at any point there are students we are unable to serve, we will strongly consider adding that to our priority list of ways we will seek to improve our services.
HEALTHY CONTENT - We are committed to producing content that is as safe and healthy as possible for our students, and which contains positive, uplifting morals and messages. See our Content Policies page for more information about this.
UNIFIED AS A "FAMILY" - We strive to provide the kind of experience that heals and bridges divides, melts down the "walls" around and between people, and unites people of all different beliefs and backgrounds for a common purpose built around shared values. Through our experiences, people of all different types grow closer together, including students building healthy friendships, staff members working together in unity, and family members all growing closer together.
PLAY-BASED LEARNING - Our learning and development activities are based on the concept of play-based learning. We make learning so engaging and fun that students often don't even realize just how much they are growing! Making learning safe and fun makes it possible for us to help our students to stretch their limits and overcome challenges and take the next steps in their development in very healthy ways. Our students learn to make bold, instinctive creative choices, to learn from mistakes, to evaluate which choices are most effective, to communicate healthily and effectively, and to create collaboratively with other people of different ages, races, beliefs, and backgrounds. Over the course of their experience at Chrysalis, our students become more and more free from fear, self-consciousness, self-criticism, perfectionism, and other destructive mindsets. Our approach to play-based learning leads to creative arts students who are comfortable, confident, vibrant, authentic, skilled, dynamic, happy, and free.
MIXED AGE GROUPS - We value finding ways for people of differing ages and experience levels to learn and create together. We find that mixing age groups provides unique learning opportunities that are beneficial for everyone. This also eliminates some negative behaviors and cultures that can come with narrower age groups. Sometimes we even allow parents and local adult performers to perform in our shows along with our students.
SMALLER GROUPS, BIGGER IMPACT - We strive to include all students who wish to participate, but we place them into small groups with a general ratio of 15-30 students with 3-4 staff. This helps to ensure that every student has plenty of opportunities to learn, grow, and shine, and enables each group to develop a special sort of family bond. Smaller groups provide students with more personalized instruction from our staff, more stage time, more time in the spotlight, drastically less of the typical destructive competition and judgment, and more chances for our staff to notice and address the challenges that are keeping students from realizing their fullest potential.
CUSTOMIZED FOR ACCOMMODATION - Every Chrysalis experience is customized around each small group of participants, so we are able to accommodate a wide range of needs and provide a successful experience for a wide range of people. Our staff are constantly seeking to learn and grow and diversify their skillsets, and our leaders are always looking for ways to add new staff members who are uniquely qualified to serve particular groups of students.
INCLUSIVE PROGRAMMING - Our programming is specifically designed to be accessible and beneficial to young people of all races, abilities, experience levels, and incomes, and those of all different backgrounds and beliefs that can be safely accommodated without endangering our participants, our program, and our partner organizations and facilities. If at any point there are students we are unable to serve, we will strongly consider adding that to our priority list of ways we will seek to improve our services.
HEALTHY CONTENT - We are committed to producing content that is as safe and healthy as possible for our students, and which contains positive, uplifting morals and messages. See our Content Policies page for more information about this.
UNIFIED AS A "FAMILY" - We strive to provide the kind of experience that heals and bridges divides, melts down the "walls" around and between people, and unites people of all different beliefs and backgrounds for a common purpose built around shared values. Through our experiences, people of all different types grow closer together, including students building healthy friendships, staff members working together in unity, and family members all growing closer together.
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Get Involved
We have many exciting opportunities for people of all ages, whether you want to be on the stage yourself, or help build the program behind the scenes!
Just a few of the skills used and learned for the performing arts include: Dance, Singing, Music, Art, Speech, Construction, Sewing, Lighting, Sound, Crafts, Writing. Photography, Film-Making, Web Design, and Marketing. Have something totally different that you would like to add to our program? We'd love to hear about it! Send us an email introducing yourself and describing your idea. |
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