A Mobile youth arts program that has outlasted most of the institutions around it is marking 35 years this month — and it is doing it the way it always has, by putting kids on a stage.
Youth on the Winning Side will host its week-long summer intensive for ages 3 to 25, combining fine arts training, mental health education and mentorship.
The Schedule
- Sunday, July 19, 5–9 p.m.: The camp kicks off with an alumni sneaker ball.
- Monday, July 20 – Thursday, July 23: The camp itself, with students exploring their creativity, building confidence and developing their talents.
- Friday, July 24: A showcase performance at the Saenger Theatre in downtown Mobile. Doors open at 5 p.m.
The Age Range Is the Tell
Look closely at that span: 3 to 25. Most youth programs stop at 18, at which point participants age out and the relationship ends.
A program that keeps its people until 25 — and that opens the week with an alumni event — is not really a summer camp. It is a long-term community, and the alumni ball is the evidence. Thirty-five years of participants means the young people in the room this week are being taught by people who sat in their chairs a decade or two ago.
That continuity is the hardest thing for a nonprofit to build and the easiest thing to lose.
Arts Plus Mental Health
The inclusion of mental health education alongside fine arts training is worth noting. It reflects a growing recognition among youth arts organizations that performance training and emotional wellbeing are not separate curricula — that the confidence a child builds on a stage and the tools a child needs to manage anxiety are, in practice, closely related.
For young people in Mobile, where access to adolescent mental health resources remains uneven, a program that builds that education into something they already want to attend is a meaningful delivery mechanism.
Ending at the Saenger
The showcase closes the week at the Saenger Theatre, the 1927 movie palace on Joachim Street that remains Mobile’s most storied performance venue.
Putting a group of students — some of them three years old — on that stage in front of their families is not an incidental choice. For a young performer, the memory of a first appearance on a real stage in a real theatre tends to outlast almost everything else about a summer.
Attending
Doors for the July 24 showcase open at 5 p.m. at the Saenger Theatre in downtown Mobile.