The Hillbarn Theatre Conservatory, formed in September 2000, is a theatre arts education program serving the needs of youth and adolescents, ages 4-16, in Foster City and the mid-peninsula area.

• An in-depth, training ground for young people who want to learn any aspect of theatre and performance.

• Valuable life skills, gaining, confidence in a professional, supportive environment. The need for artistic experience, whether as audience or artist, is universal.

•Hillbarn Theatre is committed to the concept that non-professional performers and technicians, when led by trained professionals can produce performances of high quality that generate personal and artistic growth.

It is important for the students of performing arts and for performing arts in general that Hillbarn Theatre sustains the educational programs for youth vis-à-vis our upcoming SummerStage™ 2008, future Conservatory sessions, and to explore the development and initiation of YEA! Youth Embracing Arts, a program to foster growth and offer a supportive outlet for all students of performing arts including marginalized and developmentally disabled youth.

The delineated goals of YEA! Youth Embracing Arts are to:

1. Facilitate access to the arts and positive change by all those interested in performing arts studies and foster programs for those who are marginalized by socio-economic and ethnic challenges or developmental disabilities.

2. Help move a youth from feeling like an object to an agent of change.

3. Identify strengths and assets even in the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.

The strengths-based objectives being explored to accomplish those goals are:

1. Moving the focus from identifying and fixing deficits to recognizing and building on existing strengths.

2. Building on new strengths as they emerge.

3. Strengthening larger social environments through the theatrical learning experience.

4. Fostering creative problem-solving.

5. Engaging all stakeholders at all points in the intervention process.

6. Setting realistic, attainable creative goals and outcomes for all participants.

Hillbarn Theatre and Conservatory had a small pilot project funded in part by the Rotary International whereby special needs youths participated in our Star Express session of the Hillbarn Theatre Conservatory's Summer Stage 2004. The success of that program has fostered the need to develop an encompassing undertaking that is inclusive of all youth and to expand our offerings to marginalized youth and those with developmental disabilities. We are in the course of planning, hiring, implementation, scholarship, and evaluation process for YEA! Youth Embracing Arts. It is our expectation that the process will be successful; collaborating with a service organization in San Mateo County who specializes in dealing with the developmentally challenged is also possible.