From The Wallace Foundation:
A Guide to Understanding Youth Outcomes in Community Arts Programs
When young people participate in community-based arts programs, the benefits can last a lifetime. But how can that impact be understood in the long term?
Community-based youth arts programs have been shown to provide important, engaging, and empowering experiences for young people. But often, when asked to demonstrate their impact, programs must rely on the anecdotal experiences of participants in their particular program.
An international collaboration of researchers (from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) set out to document how young people engage across these programs and what the lasting effects might be for them.
The team spoke with alumni of community-based arts programs. They also held workshops with community-based youth arts program leaders to sort through people’s responses and develop “a taxonomy” of outcomes. The tool also points to program design features that support the different outcomes.
The taxonomy can be used to:
Guide program design and improvement
Make useful comparisons to other programs
Advocate for increased recognition and support
Broaden the types of outcomes that arts organizations and funders track
Access the full report at wallacefoundation.org.
Photo courtesy of The Wallace Foundation.