Creativity Unlocks Agency
Learning and Wellbeing are Inseparable
Kara May, founding principal and co-founder of Art In Motion Academy
Kara May, founding principal and co-founder of Art in Motion Academy Creative Arts Academy in Chicago, argues that creativity isn't an add-on, or nice-to-have—it's the foundation of nurturing agency. "Creativity is what unlocks that," she says. "It builds your self-awareness. It builds your synaptic development in problem solving, understanding your space in the world."
Too manyschools treat arts as optional. Students—especially marginalized students—lose access to a pathway that can teach them who they are before telling them what to do. But that creativity is power. Students create "from nothing, just because of something that happens in your mind," May says. That process—making something from nothing—becomes how they approach everything else: academic work, community, their power to shape the world.
Art In Motion creates ways for individuals to thrive and become powerful civic actors. May talks about a seventh-grader who arrived with an IEP, drawing quietly in corners and disconnected from school. Through Art In Motion's integrated approach—critique, revision, presentation in arts classes—something shifted. "He learned through his artistic processes that it's okay to have to go back to review, to redo," May explains. That lesson transferred everywhere: to academics, including an AP course he was never "slated for”, becoming student council president, prom king, and salutatorian. He graduated with half a million dollars in scholarship offers.
Another student arrived resistant: "I'm not dancing, you can't make me." Through film class, he discovered storytelling and became a stage manager for shows. "If I just talk a little louder and know what I'm talking about, people will actually listen to me," he told May. He found his voice and pathway through relationships and the competence and confidence he built.
May is clear that individual agency alone isn't the goal. Art in Motion is a "creative arts school," not a performing arts school—students learn arts "are not just a class that you take, but they are how you think." And how you think shapes how you see your responsibility to others.
"When kids are in marginalized communities, it can be 'I take care of me and mine. I need to figure out how to just make sure my circle is safe'” May explains. The school shows ways and offers on ramps to being a whole community. Through restorative justice and an"ubuntu" philosophy, students learn they're part of something larger.
Graduating seniors describe the school as "a community of care and respect and love." They learned to correct and support each other. May connects this directly to democracy: "Once I figure out that I am a part of a greater community, and then I'm able to contribute to that greater community, then I'm much more likely to engage civically in appropriate ways. Because now what happens to my brother matters right now, what happens to the family down the street matters."