By Sharrif Simmons

The entire operation was bold investment toward bettering the lives of children.

In early March 2021, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra requested assistance with a crisis at the border. The federal government needed help temporarily housing thousands of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United States. After receiving the request, City of San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher answered the call. “When HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra requested our help to house some of the unaccompanied minors at the border,” Mayor Gloria said, “we knew it was the right thing to do.”

Government and not-for-profit leaders devised a plan to use the San Diego Convention Center as a temporary shelter for approximately three months. The average stay for each child would be from 30 to 35 days. Essential workers provided the children with food, medical care, a place to sleep, showers, and a recreation area. Over 30,000 meals were served throughout their stay, and support staff made 24,000 phone calls on the children’s behalf.

The entire operation was a bold investment toward bettering the lives of children while affirming a moral commitment to improving humanity in general. However, the emergency initiative was not limited to simply providing the children with basic needs. The crisis offered a unique opportunity to partner with San Diego’s creative arts community, a vibrant array of actors, poets, musicians, and arts educators.

What resulted was a dynamic and genuinely magical convergence of events. I witnessed and experienced several transformative moments throughout the three-month assistance program. Although these children were coping with deeply traumatic events, their exposure to arts professionals of varied backgrounds offered new ways of processing their experiences. The Globe’s Arts Engagement Department provided several workshops and activities geared toward achieving a specific goal: making theatre matter.

Our workshops, instructed entirely in Spanish, consisted of engaging activities and imaginative games. A typical sample involved students moving around the vast open space as a teaching artist suddenly announced, “La directora viene!” (“The director’s coming!”). The entire class of 50 students paused where they stood, standing frozen until hearing the command, “Take five,” then resumed covering the space while saying, “Gracias, directora.” Another exercise called “cuadro vivo” (“stage picture”) invited students to gather in groups of four, creating a tableau of an experienced event or a remembered image. During one session, a group of three adolescent girls lay face down on the floor and placed their hands behind their backs as the fourth participant pretended to take them into custody.

As heartbreaking as their reenacted scene was, it spoke to the importance of using the creative arts as a catalyst for emotional healing. In the end, the decision to include an arts education piece in the federal housing grant affirmed its vital importance as a critical infrastructure in human development. For many, these experiences at the Convention Center will remain with them for the rest of their lives. They buttress the fact that people need the arts, and that art and theatre provide a public good and are foundational in building a more nurturing and stable society.

Sharrif Simmons is a poet, musician, and teaching artist. He has performed all over the world and is the author of Fast Cities and Objects That Burn. He is currently working on his memoir, An American-African Story. This is part 2 in a series of articles regarding public good at the Convention Center.