ArtScan At-a-Glance

by | Apr 8, 2025

ArtScan, a project of the Arts Education Partnership, is clearinghouse that provides the most current information on 14 arts education policy areas related to pre-K through grade 12. ArtScan covers state policies for arts education identified in statute or...

Arts Education Data and Reporting Initiatives 2024

by | Oct 24, 2024

The Arts Education Partnership’s Data Working Group first met in 2023 to look at arts education data collection and reporting at the national, state, regional and local levels. The group’s goal was to discover where data are being collected and reported and where gaps...

The Arts Count

by | Apr 26, 2024

In May 2018, the Arts Education Partnership published Music Matters. This was the first in a four-part series of special reports that used ArtsEdSearch to illustrate the many benefits of arts education. The Arts Counts series went on to publish Visual Arts Matters,...
The Arts Educator Workforce

The Arts Educator Workforce

by | Apr 17, 2024 | General, Teacher Workforce

Addressing the arts educator workforce requires an acknowledgement of the multifaceted challenges that are tethered to it, such as turnover, accessibility and funding. This year, the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) began collecting information on improving the...
What’s New in Arts Education Policy?

What’s New in Arts Education Policy?

by | Apr 3, 2024 | General

We hope the anticipation has subsided as this year’s updates to the ArtScan database have finally been released! ArtScan is a comparison of 13 arts education policy areas across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity....
Intervention

There are multiple points throughout the juvenile justice process where arts–based programs can intervene in the lives of youth involved in the system, including during initial contact, correctional placement and reentry. Many of these programs enter juvenile correctional facilities to offer arts activities with support from teaching artists, but there are also diversion and alternative school program opportunities to engage the arts as well. The overall goal of these programs is to reduce recidivism through creative practices that allow youth to grow and discover future possibilities for themselves. 

Baltimore Youth Arts – This program provides entrepreneurship and job training initiatives that support artistic and professional opportunities to young people ages 14–25, focusing on young people involved in the justice system. (Maryland)

Free Verse – Serving youth incarcerated in both juvenile detention centers and inpatient treatment centers, this organization provides arts and humanities–based educational programming within facilities. In 2023, the organization expanded programming to to serve non-incarcerated, justice–involved youth. (Montana)

NOMADstudio – NOMADstudio has developed their Justice Studio in-house after–school art studio program at the Pinellas Regional Juvenile Detention Center where teaching artists host creative sessions with incarcerated students multiple times a week. (Florida)

Performing Statistics – This organization utilizes a variety of art mediums and storytelling to work with youth most impacted by the juvenile justice system to advocate for a world without incarceration. (Virginia)

Prevention

One of the most effective ways to reduce risk factors that may increase juvenile delinquent behaviors is to introduce preventative programs early on to assist children, families and their communities. Preventative programs that incorporate arts–based activities help children develop and strengthen cognitive, regulatory and social and emotional skills that can positively influence their academic and future workforce trajectory.

Miami Music Project – This program aims to empower children to develop values of community, develop creativity, obtain excellence, improve school performance and strengthen family dynamics through studying and performing music. (Florida)

Raw Art Works – Recognizing the unique stories of children, this program provides free painting and filmmaking experiences for kids in grades 4–12 to explore and envision different possibilities for their futures. (Massachusetts)

Arts For Ashes – This program encourages creative transformation through the power of artistic expression among high–risk youth age 9–24 years old. The program developed the award–winning Drawing on Air curriculum which uses expression, connection, and transformation to facilitate youth resiliency and artistic competence through visual and tactile art. (Colorado)

Healing

Youth in the juvenile justice system are commonly exposed to trauma in some capacity, whether before, during or after involvement in the system. Arts–based healing programs address these traumas and help youth build resilience, strengthen coping skills and foster positive self–esteem through modes of art therapy. Arts education and art therapy work hand–in–hand in the juvenile justice space, often overlapping and supporting each other. By offering opportunities for self–expression and reflection , youth can heal in safe environments with trauma-informed supports.  

A Reason To Survive (ARTS) – The ARTS 4 Justice initiative connects system-involved young people with arts programming and community-based projects to address the root causes of systemic violence and injustice in communities across south San Diego. (California)

Mural Arts Philadelphia – This organization offers their Restorative Practices Youth program that provides art and healing-centered engagements to students impacted by the juvenile justice system and transitioning out of foster care networks with hopes of empowering students to discover their creative voices. (Pennsylvania)

My Voice Music – This organization offers community satellite programs that provide instruments and instruction for music groups and recording sessions at mental health treatment centers, juvenile justice facilities, refugee resettlement centers, and social service agencies throughout Oregon. (Oregon)

NeOn Arts – This program is a collaboration between the New York City Department of Probation (DOP) and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute to integrate arts programming within community-based probation centers located throughout New York City, serving young people ages 16–24 years old. (New York)

Transition

Transition programs provide support services for youth who are reentering society from out–of–home placements. Arts–based transitional programs involve collaboration among placement facilities (including correctional institutions), schools, families and communities to provide arts activities that assist youth development for a successful transition into society.

Big Thought – This organization offers their Creative Solutions program- an arts–as–workforce intervention program for youth who have encountered the justice system. (Texas)

Keshet Arts – Through different justice initiatives, this organization offers post–release arts programming for previously incarcerated young artists/students. Originally focusing on dance programming, the organization has expanded and seeks to increase  community–based and arts-based resources and resource-connectivity. (New Mexico)

The Imagine Bus Project – This organization administers the Arts On The Outs 9–month reentry program for youth who have been released from a juvenile institution. This program provides arts education, individualized life skill building with a case manager, and arts employment. (California)

Title: 2280 Pasos Bajo un Cielo Nublado | Artist: Hernán Jourdan | Medium: Film

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Title: Fluent Nature | Artist: Melli Hoppe | Medium: Film

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When I was asked to create a work of art exploring literacy, I wanted to create a dance but I had no dancers or a studio, so I chose to use my own body in the space I had, my yard. Fluent Nature is video of micro-choreography that explores what cannot be expressed with words, how nature has its own language, and how placing the human body in nature changes the story.

Title: What Is Me and What Is Not Me | Artist: Alex Chadwell | Medium: Music

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My thinking on arts and literacy centers around the concept of literacies and artmaking as both sense-making and meaning-making processes that organically and inevitably overlap, intersect, and reciprocate. Compositionally, What is me and what is not me is a sound collage of sorts (there is no notation for the piece, and I'd be hard pressed to recreate it accurately) that abstractly and aurally represents the relationships between literacies and artmaking.

Title: A Curious Honeybee | Artist: Gideon Young | Medium: Film

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Offering welcome through traditional and digital elements of literacy, A Curious Honeybee provides an experiential learning environment by activating visual, musical, natural, and emotional literacies.

Title: Tercera Llamada | Artist: Karilú Forshee | Medium: Audio

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La Carpa Theatre is a project that I am currently directing in the Detroit Latinx community. The project aims to strengthen and uplift youth voices through devised theatre, in the style of the Mexican Carpas. This audio was created in the theatrical environment envisioned for our project. The ways in which literacies are re-defined are at the heart of La Carpa Theatre's mission.

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Title: Literaseas | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite and ink on paper with digital edits

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Title: A Riddle | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

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Title: False Binaries | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

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