But instead of a 45-minute class, the camps run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at KCYA’s facility at 3732 Main Street in Kansas City.

LINC has teamed up with KCYA since 2009 to bring its teaching artists into schools to provide free classes for the same reason that KCYA is giving LINC children free access to its summer camps.

“We want to remove all the barriers” that might stand between children and the power of art, Arvizu said. “We’re all in this together.”

In one recent week of camp, Friday’s showcases presented children who created fanciful face masks, performed story-telling folk tunes, and who had written, casted, practiced and ultimately performed a theater play.

The camp is led by artists from the same fleet of talent that visits LINC’s programs during the regular school year.

The in-school classes are designed with an eye toward matching and enhancing the curriculum in both the school and after-school programs, Arvizu said. The classes aim to bring children into the arts wherever they might be in their growth, and enrich the classroom’s education, culture and behavior.

The excitement in the LINC students during KCYA programs in after-school time is telling, said Sean Akridge, LINC’s Caring Communities Administrator.

“If parents come early to pick their kids up, the kids say they want their parents to wait until it’s over,” Akridge said.

The children are getting a taste of what’s possible in their lives that they might not otherwise have gotten, he said.

“They get something they can connect to,” he said, “something they can own and integrate into who they are.”