The 4-H Expressive Arts program plays a vital role in enabling our youth to enhance and inspire their creative talent, play a central role in shaping their sense of personal, social and cultural identities.  This 4-H program provide opportunities for positive youth development in four guiding concepts: mastery, belonging, independence, and generosity. The 4-H Expressive Arts program fosters mastery by teaching youth the basic principles of art; belonging by giving them the opportunity to work with others; independence by allowing them to use their skills to create their own works of art; and generosity by identifying ways they can use their art to make a difference in their lives and community. 

The art processes are simple, and no previous art background is needed to help open the senses and access their imagination.  Eight hundred fifty-two 4-H Club members, in 47 school classroom clubs, designed and completed a 4-H themed poster that allowed them to enhance their artistic self-expression, communication skills, problem solving and creativity — all of which are important life skills. The broad choices of media they were allowed to use appealed to students’ different artistic styles. Classroom, school, and county Champions were selected at each grade level (47 classroom champions, 6 school champions and 3 county champions). 

According to research conducted by Michael Mason and Susan Chuang in 2001, students participating in an arts project showed increases in self-esteem, social skills and leadership.   Ohio County youth who participated in the 4-H Expressive Arts project were exposed to a variety of personal developmental opportunities.  In the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the arts share equal billing with reading, math, science, and other disciplines as “core academic subjects,” which contributes to improved student learning outcomes.  

• 802 4-H club members (94%) completed the project and submitted a 4-H themed poster for judging competition.
• In this 4-H project, youth learned the basic principles of art and how to use those norms to create works of art through painting, printing, graphic design, drawing, and/or fiber arts (Kentucky 4-H Expressive Arts Curriculum).
• “This 4-H project showed students that there are many different forms of art, which allows everyone to express themselves in their own unique creative way.” (Classroom Teacher)