While five of her children darted and dashed in a game of capture the flag inside the community center gym, or perfected a drawing of Moana in the auditorium, Esther Fleurant was perched before her laptop in the lobby, studying for her Securities Industry Essentials exam.

 Fleurant and her kids had come to the City Wide Community Center from their home near downtown for SPARC — Sports, Play, Arts and Recreation Club — a new, free city program on weekend afternoons.

“The kids are making friends and getting out of the house,” Esther said.

She reconnected with other parents, like a mom she knew from her daughter’s dance group, but hadn’t seen since the summer. The program had only been running for a few weeks, but “we love everything about it,” she said.

On this Saturday in particular, five-and-a-half-year-old Hodiyah Fleurant carefully added green shading to the belly of a dragon drawing. Rivkah, 10, decided she wanted to stay for the big-kid games in the afternoon.

Avi Fleurant, 16, works the program as a staff member.

SPARC has provided Avi a chance to build new relationships and guide younger kids through that same experience, she said.

“The environment we create here is so unique,” she said. “Just the kids who come in, their attitude — they come here just to make connections.”

Avi, who is home-schooled, described the program as an opportunity to meet new people she hadn’t crossed paths with before. Over word-search puzzles, she chatted with fellow staff Lilah Castellano, a recent Concord High grad, and Holly Keenan, a current junior, whom she’d already come to see as friends. 

Aimed at forging bonds between local kids of different backgrounds and opening up a safe, free space at a time when it will be most used, SPARC got its start last winter as a volunteer run “CommUNITY” program. This year, it’s run and staffed by Concord’s Parks and Recreation Department. SPARC’s open drop-in model makes it unique among offerings by the city, and organizers behind it hope it will forge a path towards “fostering belonging and connection, especially for youth in our community who face racism and other barriers to inclusion,” as their website states.

A typical afternoon at SPARC includes stations for drawing, legos, crafts, puzzles, card games and music as well as group games like soccer, dodgeball or freeze dance. From 2 to 4 p.m., the program is open to families of all ages, though kids under 10 need a guardian with them. Just over an hour following that is set aside for older kids and teens. Staff, who range in age from their teens to twenties, float between activities.

“We want everyone to feel like they can participate in anything they want,” said Morgan Polk, 22, who manages the program at Parks and Rec. “I want the kids to want to do the activities. If we see someone sitting on their phone, we’re missing something.”

A group of local parents got the idea for the program in 2023, after a forum hosted by Project STORY, which stands for Supporting Talents of Rising Youth. They wanted to create something that was easy to access and would help connect kids across Concord from a range of backgrounds.

“The idea was that doing art and play together would be a way to strengthen community bonds and belonging for everyone,” said Meredith Cooley, a member of that parent group, now known as Friends of SPARC. “It would be infused into the program.”

They pitched the city for special event funding to get the program, run by volunteers, off the ground. Once last year’s ended, they decided to encourage the city to take it on as a city-run program, which would lend the stability, resources and expertise.

Even as the Parks and Recreation Department has taken on the organizing and planning, Friends of SPARC has worked to improve the program, Cooley said — removing a pre-registration requirement and ensuring there are mixed-gender staff in both the sports and arts spaces are among the changes.

Some obstacles to participation still exist that Cooley hopes to find a way around — transportation is a huge one. Many kids don’t live within walking distance — or don’t feel safe on Loudon Road — or are unable to get a ride from their parents.

Cooley hopes SPARC gets the city into the habit of developing lower-barrier programming.

“We wanted to see the city really own this and make it thrive,” she said. “We also want it to stay mission-driven.”

The program is still in its early days and growing its following.

“It’s getting better and better every week,” Cooley said, a sentiment that was echoed by city staff.

Maddie Short, 16, described the program as having a kind of summer camp liveliness, a fertile ground for fast friendships and go, go, go energy.

“They bring in this energy and confidence,” she said. “You’ll see kids who don’t know each other, and then minutes later they’re tearing it up in basketball.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct residence area of the Fleurant family. 

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at con cordmonitor.com.