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.
In a 2025 report, Kylie Peppler, Julian Sefton-Green, and several colleagues interviewed community-based arts program alumni in three countries to understand the long-term impacts of youth arts participation. They set out to map the effects of community-based youth arts participation across people’s lives.
Based on alumni’s reflections—sometimes decades removed from their time in the program—the team created a “taxonomy,” or system for cataloging program outcomes. They identified two primary categories of outcomes: relational outcomes and opportunity outcomes.
Relational outcomes shape how arts program participants interact with peers and mentors, as well as how they come to understand themselves, their community, and their environment. These are commonly perceived to be a powerful benefit of youth arts programs. Less common are the opportunity outcomes this study highlighted, which show how arts programs can help young people envision adulthood and career pathways.
These two main categories break down into a series of sub-categories and specific outcomes that help young people build skills and seed opportunities for the future through program participation. This graphic highlights the categories and subcategories of outcomes.
These categories could be used to:
Guide program design and improvement, ensuring arts organizations structure their programs with elements linked to their desired long-term outcomes
Make useful comparisons to other programs so organizations can focus on the outcomes and approaches that fit their community’s needs
Advocate for increased recognition and support by demonstrating the full value of these programs to funders and policymakers
Broaden the types of outcomes that arts organizations and funders track, including attendance, behavior change, and skill acquisition, as well as less commonly documented benefits like interpersonal growth, identity formation, and personal agency
Watch this video with Peppler to learn more about how to apply your own context to the taxonomy and how it can help support and improve your work.
