Creative Expression, Caring Relationships, and Career Pathways

A Guide to Youth Outcomes in Community Arts Programs

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), commissioned and funded by The Wallace Foundation, 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.