First Lady Michelle Obama presented the 2014 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award to students representing 13 after-school programs yesterday, including Workshop Houston. First presented in 1998, the award is a signature program of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, of which the First Lady serves as honorary chair.
Workshop Houston was founded by four long-time collaborators: Seth Capron, Katy Goodman, Benjamin Mason, and Zach Moser. Guided by the belief that the foundations of progressive change are in positive and engaged communities and that dynamic hands-on learning processes can create these communities, they came from Oberlin College in rural Ohio to Houston in 2003 to start the Third Ward Bike Shop. The Bike Shop was the first project of the organization that became Workshop Houston. The program now includes youth development programs through its four shops: the Chopper Shop (welding and metal fabrication), the Beat Shop (music production), the Style Shop (fashion and graphic design) and the Scholar Shop (tutoring and academic enrichment) and is now co-directed by Reginald Hatter and Katy Goodman.
“You teach kids more than just skills in the arts and humanities, but you light a fire in them,” the First Lady said to all the award recipients. “That has an impact on our kids—not just on their arts and the humanities, but in their successes in school and in life.”
Go Workshop Houston! Congratulations!
