New Report Provides Insights on How Arts Engagement Promotes Youth Well-Being

PRESS CONTACTS

Julie Danni
The Wallace Foundation
JDanni@wallacefoundation.org / 212-251-9742

Caroline Farrell / Emma Gold / Delaney Smith
Resnicow and Associates
CFarrell@resnicow.com / EGold@resnicow.com / DSmith@resnicow.com
212-671-5157 / 212-671-5186 / 212-671-5160

Cross-disciplinary literature review outlines key mechanisms for how youth arts engagement can contribute to several dimensions of well-being and identifies opportunities to fill gaps in existing research

NEW YORK, MARCH 4, 2025—While research studies have found that arts engagement is an effective way to promote well-being, a common framework has not yet been established to demonstrate how arts engagement promotes the well-being of youth, across disparate fields such as health, psychology, education, and others. A new report released today provides direction toward such a framework, connecting a fragmented research base to establish definitions for youth well-being, examine how arts engagement is measured, and identify key mechanisms by which arts organizations can facilitate youth well-being. Stitching Together the Threads: A Cross-Disciplinary Literature Review on Youth Arts and Well-Being, commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by RAND, also pinpoints several gaps in the literature and proposes opportunities to address them in order to better understand how arts engagement promotes youth well-being.

“The arts represent a strategy for supporting young people’s well-being across a range of fields that don’t talk to each other. We wondered if connecting the conversations could lead to new insights,” said Bronwyn Bevan, Vice President of Research, The Wallace Foundation. “We hope the mechanisms the study identified the arts playing across multiple dimensions of young people’s development can provide a foundation for strengthening the evidence base in the art.”

The report included a review of 177 publications from academic and grey literature from 2014 through 2023, supplemented by interviews with experts, leaders, and practitioners in relevant fields of arts engagement, youth development, and well-being. Among the key findings in Stitching Together the Threads, the RAND team identified five complex and interrelated mechanisms that promote well-being through arts engagement, which could become the basis for a common framework for youth-serving arts organizations. These include building agency to make positive social change; facilitating healing and wellness; encouraging self-expression; creating social connections and community; and developing skills and a mastery mindset. These mechanisms contribute to nine different dimensions of youth well-being identified by the researchers, including academic and practical competencies; productivity and employability; cultural and spiritual beliefs and values; economic stability; civic engagement and community safety; connectedness to others and their environment; positive state of mind; physical health; and feelings of inclusion and justice.

In reviewing the existing literature and through interviews, RAND also identified several opportunities to fill knowledge gaps with further research and practice to advance the field of youth arts and well-being. These opportunities include:

• Building cross-disciplinary relationships to better research the connection between arts engagement and youth well-being through a diversity of approaches
• Improving partnerships within the areas of arts and community organizing to catalyze the development and study of arts engagement focused on building agency to promote positive social change
• Bringing together practitioners and researchers to study the interpersonal and community-level mechanisms through which the arts promote well-being in order to advance more holistic approaches
• Defining and testing youth-led arts engagement approaches to determine outcomes of youth leadership on well-being
• Uniting academic institutions, arts organizations, and policy-focused organizations to better understand the association between arts participation and feelings of inclusion and justice
• Documenting how to equitably implement the mechanisms for arts engagement and their impacts on inequities in youth well-being
• Developing innovative study designs and measures to quantify the impact of the arts and test whether they are reliable and effective

“The path forward in arts and youth well-being research demands strategic cross-disciplinary partnerships to weave together diverse approaches and define what rigor means in this space, develop and test youth-led approaches, and create innovative study designs and measures,” said Joie Acosta, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND and lead author of this report. “Bridging individual and community-level research, studying various art forms' distinct contributions, and fostering collaborations between academic institutions, arts organizations, and other systems are paramount to move the science of arts and well-being forward and find effective multilevel solutions and policies that help youth thrive.”

To learn more about Stitching Together the Threads: A Cross-Disciplinary Literature Review on Your Arts and Well-Being and other reports on youth arts, visit www.wallacefoundation.org. 

About RAND 
RAND is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that provides leaders with the information they need to make evidence-based decisions. 

About RAND Education and Labor 

RAND Education and Labor is a division of RAND that conducts research on early childhood through postsecondary education programs, workforce development, and programs and policies affecting workers, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy and decision making. 

About The Wallace Foundation
Wallace is an independent, nonpartisan research foundation focused on the arts, school leadership, and youth development. We collaborate with grantees and research partners to design and test innovative approaches to address pressing problems in the fields we serve. The evidence-based insights we share—searchable online and free of charge—support policymakers and practitioners in their efforts to improve outcomes, enhance community vitality, and help all people reach their full potential. www.WallaceFoundation.org