At first, it seemed like a bad idea. Fifteen middle school kids, fresh off of school and bursting with energy, were going to learn how to crochet.
“I thought, ‘You’re crazy,’” said Lisa Crosby, director of the Lake Region Arts Center, of artist Kaitlyn Hillebrand’s lesson plan for the afternoon. “The first 10 minutes were total chaos.”
Yet, when the after-school buzz wore off and the students were finally getting the hang of it, creating slip knots and links of yarn chains, “it was actually really successful,” Crosby said.
Crosby, who spent 17 years working in elder care, said she knows how to manage a room of 30 seniors, but when it came to middle school kids, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Even in that first 10 minutes of crocheting, I had to realize that they came here because they wanted to be here,” Crosby said. “We will get through this … Just breathe.”
Hillebrand is one of several teaching artists engaged in the Devils Lake After-School Arts Program, a collaborative partnership with Central Middle School – located just a few blocks from the arts center – and supported by the Northeast Education Services Cooperative, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, and North Dakota Council on the Arts.
Fellow teaching artist Cheryl Peterson has been with the program since its start in the winter of 2025 and is now the primary educator for the after-school program.
“When you put art supplies with a child, it opens up a whole new world for them to be creative and feel good about themselves,” said Peterson. “It’s like opening up a book and finding yourself in another place – and art can do that to your brain, too.”
“There is a huge need for reinforcing what they are learning during the school day and bringing that into an after-school program,” said Jennifer Carlson, executive director at Northeast Education Services Cooperative. “They just don’t have anywhere for students to go when parents are working, and this helps the families – not only the parents, but for the kids to have a safe place to go. Especially in these rural areas.”
Carlson stresses the program’s ability to reach students who might not otherwise have access to arts education.
“I am on a school board in a small rural school and we just don’t have the money to hire an art teacher,” she said. “With the funding that is provided for schools to operate, you have to make those decisions - what are the must-haves and what can you live without?”
Bringing together multiple partners and funding sources has allowed the after-school program to return for a second year in 2026 and hopes are to continue to grow the program, which is currently capped at 15 students.
“Providing a resource like this and lining it up helps the schools offer these opportunities to the students who wouldn’t have it otherwise,” said Carlson.
Crosby describes the after-school arts program as a safe place where children can be creative. “No matter what they create, we want them to have a good experience creating something – and to have fun.”
The Lake Region Arts Center has become a welcomed retreat for students and is an outlet of convenience - as children can walk over after school - but it’s also a place where they can focus their energy. Hands-on projects allow students to express themselves while also engaging in play through making snakes from bottle caps (top), or creating abstract self-portraits from construction paper (right), or “collage roulette” where students use randomly selected magazine pages to create new art.
“When they come in, they don’t know what the art is going to be for that day,” said Peterson. “You can just see their brains clicking through the steps. Most of what they are doing are things that they are not familiar with, but I tell them, ‘You can’t screw it up. It’s art.’”
Peterson helps students feel confident and to create their artwork the way they want. “Then they relax more,” she said.
“She just has a command over the students,” described Carlson. “She has a huge library of tricks up her sleeve that she is doing with the kids.”
The program was designed to increase accessibility to the arts, encourage creative thinking, and engage students in hands-on art education through a mix of drawing, painting, and mixed media, but also with playful (and hugely successful) lessons such as artisan cookie decorating (left) and leatherworking.
Peterson, who does intricate leatherwork with her husband, Dave, brought the artform to the students. “They were just pounding away like mad,” Peterson said, who gave the students tools to hammer designs into inch-wide leather bracelets that close with a snap. “They had just come out of school, where you have to follow all the rules, and they get to pound the heck out of something. They loved it.”
For Crosby, she’s learning how to be nimble and go with the flow, even if it might seem like a bit of chaos. “It’s been really rewarding working with the kids and the schools,” she said. “Everyone that comes wants to be here, and they want to learn.”
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About the Author
Anna Paige is an award-winning journalist and photographer and the co-founder of Young Poets, winner of a Library of Congress Award for Literacy. Founded in Montana, Young Poets encourages students to express themselves with poetry, and in collaboration with the Kindred Area Arts Partnership and North Dakota Council on the Arts, Young Poets expanded into North Dakota in 2026. Among a variety of experiences, Anna served as the 2026 artist-in-residence at Kindred Elementary, teaching four classrooms of third grade students with 12-weeks of poetry lessons.