Current Programming
Art & Action: An after-school program for at-risk youth is our most extensive, year-round outreach program. We currently collaborate with the Evanston Police Department's Youth Services Program (www.evanstonpolice.com); the Youth Organizations Umbrella (www.youevanston.org); the Evanston Community Defenders Office; and P.E.E.R. Services (Prevention, Education, Evaluation, and Recovery) (www.peer.org)
Our Goals for the Art & Action Program are:
To help young people find creative ways to help themselves.
Our goal is to provide a safe space where young people who are faced with very real life challenges can learn to use the creative arts to turn to their own creative inner resources. We hope to promote healthy decision-making and healthy management of the turbulent emotional world of adolescence.
To work together to create a healthy community:
We team with other youth-serving agencies to create high quality constructive after-school programming. Through collaboration, our organizations augment each other's strengths and create a community environment, which serves the whole teen.
To provide arts programming that is accessible and relevant:
We seek to make the deep benefits of art and writing available to youth whose circumstances or behaviors have brought them in contact with our social service partners. We provide safe, engaging encounters with creative art-making, and we tailor the program focus to the special needs of each group we serve.
To advocate to make teen voices heard:
To effectively advocate for youth, we provide an art and writing show session's end. The exhibition educates the public by displaying the truths of the youths' experiences in their own voices - in a highly direct and powerful way. Our experience with at-risk youth has shown us that these exhibits also increase the self-esteem of the participants because it allows each of them to be individually seen and appreciated by their community (as well as their families) for who they are and what they feel (which is often the contrary to their previous experience).
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