BYA X **The National Aquarium Harbor Wetland exhibit**

What will Baltimore's Inner Harbor look like in 25 years? In 50? In 100?

Over the past century, the harbor has changed enormously: the water, the shoreline, and the ways people use and relate to it. With so much uncertainty, it's hard to picture what a space shared by people and nature will look like a hundred years from now. For four months, youth and staff at Baltimore Youth Arts sat with that question.

Our minds ran in every direction. Will the water be higher? Will the shoreline move? Could technology help protect our shared environment, or would it do more harm? We kept coming back to one idea: real change for the better will take all of us, working together.

Thirty-one youth, five BYA staff members, and a team from the National Aquarium (educators, conservationists, exhibit designers, and community liaisons) imagined the future together. We found common ground, agreed on a shared visual story, and created 12 collaborative artworks.

Learn more about the National Aquarium’s Harbor Wetland exhibit.

Young people do their best work when we trust them to think as well as create.

At BYA, we believe young people do their best work when we trust them to think as well as create. Our Summer Studio Apprentice Program, a paid creative training program, is where we put that belief into practice every year, and where we get to watch them prove it right.

The National Aquarium trusted us, and the young people in our program, to imagine the future of the Baltimore Harbor. Its conservationists and educators chose to hand that question to teenagers and young adults, then spent the spring and summer working alongside them through field trips, studio sessions, and meetings, teaching the science, debating the possibilities, and treating the Apprentices' research with the same seriousness as their own.