The inspiration and power of 4-H Expressive Arts program play a vital role in enabling our young people to enhance their creative talent, play a central role in shaping their sense of personal, social and cultural identities, and 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. 

Youth do not need to be an artist.  Processes are simple and no previous art background is needed to help open the senses and access their imagination.  Over nine hundred 4-H Club members, in 46 school classroom clubs, designed and completed a 4-H themed poster that allowed them to enhance their artistic self-expression, communication skills, cooperation, 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 (46 classroom champions, 6 school champions and 3 county champions). 

Ohio County youth who participated in the 4-H Expressive Arts project are exposed to a variety of development opportunities for personal development.  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.  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.   

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