Move More, Learn More: The Importance of Bringing Movement, Art & Music Into Your Healthy Life
Aug 5, 2026 · 14 min · 10 segments
Today on our Move More, Learn More! podcast, we speak with Doug Kenney about the power of art and mentorship in youth empowerment. Doug worked most recently at the Gary Comer Youth Center, the largest…
Doug KenneyGuest
Lynne KenneyHost
Mike KuczalaHost
You know, you've told me before, if people will not participate in community caring, whether it's the brands you work with or the artists, you don't want to work with them.
So talk a little bit about the mentor youth events and how you work in that space.
Really started out when I was at Gary Comer Youth Center, I was the director of engagement marketing communications, and I would ride my bike around the neighborhood to meet the most active neighbors, those that are working on their lawn, those in the neighborhood clubs.
And I would be asking them, what do they need? What are they interested in? And there was always a sense of, you know, we want to help the young people in our community.
This is the root of our challenges is getting the young people to be able to have activities that they can do and feel good about and So basically, when I connected with an organization called Pigment, a black fine art magazine, they had a whole network of artists that they were working with who wanted to have an impact on young people.
So it's every artist that I meet, especially artists of color, want to help skill up and bring others to their experience.
They know that they didn't have those guides, those mentors, those opportunities.
through whatever means it was or they had a teacher or they had a after-school program so they're very interested in helping but we want to make it so that it's satisfying for both the mentor and the mentee it's a structured environment that gives them sets the right expectations so we started with very simple we would go to art fairs like chicago art expo and we would have these artists meet the young artists that we would bring in from gary comer youth center and other programs They would meet and just connect.
And then they would just walking around the fair, looking at other, the artwork, meeting black gallerists, meeting other black artists, understand that they belong in that space was really important.
And that evolved into workshops where they would learn about being a career as an artist.
You know, you've told me before, if people will not participate in community caring, whether it's the brands you work with or the artists, you don't want to work with them.
So talk a little bit about the mentor youth events and how you work in that space.
Really started out when I was at Gary Comer Youth Center, I was the director of engagement marketing communications, and I would ride my bike around the neighborhood to meet the most active neighbors, those that are working on their lawn, those in the neighborhood clubs.
And I would be asking them, what do they need? What are they interested in? And there was always a sense of, you know, we want to help the young people in our community.
This is the root of our challenges is getting the young people to be able to have activities that they can do and feel good about and So basically, when I connected with an organization called Pigment, a black fine art magazine, they had a whole network of artists that they were working with who wanted to have an impact on young people.
So it's every artist that I meet, especially artists of color, want to help skill up and bring others to their experience.
They know that they didn't have those guides, those mentors, those opportunities.
through whatever means it was or they had a teacher or they had a after-school program so they're very interested in helping but we want to make it so that it's satisfying for both the mentor and the mentee it's a structured environment that gives them sets the right expectations so we started with very simple we would go to art fairs like chicago art expo and we would have these artists meet the young artists that we would bring in from gary comer youth center and other programs They would meet and just connect.
And then they would just walking around the fair, looking at other, the artwork, meeting black gallerists, meeting other black artists, understand that they belong in that space was really important.
And that evolved into workshops where they would learn about being a career as an artist.
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