Each year, Creative Santa Fe has had the privilege of working with a Santa Fe Prep student intern. We are always astounded by their hard work, thoughtful insights, and fantastic ideas, and this year was no exception with the remarkably talented Sadie Wiese. Sadie’s contribution to Creative Santa Fe is a testament to the critical need for a multi-generational approach to solving big challenges – locally and globally.

Sadie’s focal project was to create, disseminate, and analyze a survey to determine what local youth want in Santa Fe. The call to action questions were: What is the brightest future imaginable for Santa Fe and what steps can we take to achieve that goal? and What if you could help change the future of Santa Fe? She received 154 responses from students who attend Santa Fe Indian School, Desert Academy, New Mexico School for the Arts, Waldorf, New Mexico School for the Deaf, Santa Fe Prep, and Monte del Sol.

There are a lot of great ideas and recommendations in this report. We hope you will spend some time with it and consider how we all might keep building the city’s amenities and infrastructure for our youth to thrive.

Santa Fe Youth Survey

My name is Sadie Wiese, and I am a senior at Santa Fe Prep, where the teachers generously allow seniors to participate in an internship during the final month of school instead of attending classes. Obviously, I chose to intern for Creative Santa Fe and I could not be happier with my decision!

From the 154 responses, I found that 70% of teens believe that the main thing Santa Fe is lacking is a variety of affordable youth activities, 61% feel they do not have a voice in local issues, and consequently, 67% of teens do not see themselves living in Santa Fe in 5 years.

During the four weeks, my main project was to create, send, and analyze a youth survey to determine what high school students want in Santa Fe.From the 154 responses, I found that 70% of teens believe that the main thing Santa Fe is lacking is a variety of affordable youth activities, 61% feel they do not have a voice in local issues, and consequently, 67% of teens do not see themselves living in Santa Fe in 5 years.

Now this may seem negative, but these students gave us several insightful suggestions as to how organizations can better serve local youth. This includes increasing the number of teen accessible events, or even giving them the resources to create their own and also initiating a welcoming environment for students to participate in local issues and close the generational gap. In addition, it requires combining Santa Fe’s natural strengths with new, unique ideas to create events and programs that give youth not only what they want, but what they need. Nearly all of the participants agreed that the strengths of the city were the arts (85%), culture (79%), community (49%), and the beautiful outdoors (38%). When asked to describe Santa Fe in one word, the most common answer was “beautiful.”

If you would like to see a more detailed report of this survey, click the links below. Thanks for reading!”

-Sadie Wiese

Santa Fe Youth Survey by Sadie Wiese

City of Santa Fe Teen Summit Report

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