Creative Opportunities for LA County Youth

Support for foster and systems-impacted youth

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Up to 400 youth are incarcerated in LA County detention facilities at any given time. Many more have exited incarceration and need additional support. More still have not been in the juvenile justice system but are at risk for involvement. Systems-impacted and at-promise youth in LA County are disproportionately Black and Brown, low-income, and from other historically marginalized populations. Encounters with the juvenile justice system can compound inequities and introduce further barriers throughout a youth’s life: trauma, community violence, gang involvement, and poverty.
Systems-impacted and at-promise youth in LA County overwhelmingly attend or have attended underfunded and underperforming schools, and many have had no prior access to arts education. More urgently, many struggle with substance use and unstable housing, and have difficulties getting basic needs like food or transportation met. They have few opportunities to build job skills or express themselves creatively.

Our proposed project is an expansion of AHJN’s YLD program, which involves healing-informed artmaking, youth-supported and youth-led advocacy, re-entry support, career and leadership development, skill-building, peer mentorship, and pathways for employment in the creative economy. YLD‘s three program tracks are designed to meet the needs of systems-impacted and at-promise youth:
Our True Colors (OTC), weekly supportive group sessions for youth exiting incarceration. Sessions are focused on healing, mentorship, art creation, and connection to community resources. Arts Fellowships, paid 200-hour arts internships with an AHJN member organization. Youth foster connections, build job skills, and gain interpersonal skills.
Leadership & Liberation Fellowships (L&L), where youth can develop leadership and advocacy skills. Youth learn about systems that impact them, and how to use art to tell their stories while participating in activations, meetings, and calls to action.
Capstone Projects, our newest track, serves as a culmination of a youth’s experience in YLD. In these self-directed arts-based projects youth develop more advanced jobs skills, reflect on the program, and present their findings. To address barriers many of these youth face, warm handoffs to our community partners help meet basic needs like housing, food, and substance use treatment. YLD provides a steppingstone for youth to enter the workforce prepared and supported.

We want an LA County where at-promise and systems-impacted youth are supported, their wellbeing is prioritized, and they have opportunities to turn their lives around. We model this through YLD. AHJN empowers youth to reclaim their stories, build strong communities, transform systems, and determine their own futures, using art as a vehicle for self-expression and healing. To further support youth, we are expanding our network and community partnerships — broadening youths’ experiences in YLD, connect them to more resources, and strengthen our collective voice. Our approach serves as a model for community-based alternatives to the juvenile justice system. If we are successful, punitive responses to trauma, violence, and harmful system engagement will be replaced with positive feedback, experiential learning, mentorship, and care. Our vision for the future includes a cultural transformation of the juvenile justice system, and, eventually, complete decarceration of youth in LA County.

AHJN utilizes tools such as surveys, sign-in sheets, member and youth case studies, discussions, and listening sessions to track and assess our work. These tools will help us identify and evaluate the impact this grant has on the at-promise, foster, and systems-impacted youth we intend to serve. We will evaluate success by measuring the number of youths from under-resourced communities who are involved, the hours of programming run, and the number and type of youth-led events held. We also assess our impact through a critical evaluation lens utilizing community cultural wealth, critical race theory, and grounded theory as evaluation frameworks. We center the stories of the youth served and focus on their sense of belonging, community connections, and social-emotional growth. We are continuing to adjust our evaluation procedures, in an effort to make them even more efficient, targeted, and mindful of youth needs — and more focused on advancing equity for the communities served.