How do community arts programs help young people thrive as adults? Researchers at the University of California, Irvine interviewed people in three countries who had participated in youth arts programs 10 to 20 years earlier. Their report, Creative Expression, Caring Relationships, and Career Pathways: A Guide to Youth Outcomes in Community Arts Programs, lays out the myriad ways in which arts programs supported young people and helped them find opportunities into adulthood.
In this video, lead author Kylie Peppler explains how artists and educators could use the report's findings to support and improve their work.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Kylie Peppler, professor of informatics and education at the University of California, Irvine. I'm here today to talk about our new report, Creative Expression Caring Relationships and Career Pathways A Guide to Youth Outcomes in Community Arts Programs.
People often view youth arts programs as opportunities to learn specific skills, like getting the hang of a basic plié and ballet, or as a way to help students succeed academically. But community based arts programs could do so, so much more. They offer what our research team has called a constellation of benefits, helping young people shape their identities, forge deeper relationships, learn about other cultures, and explore possible careers.
But it's been almost impossible to articulate the full, long-term value of such programs. The methods typically used to assess their impact miss the less quantifiable but equally important benefits, like cultivating self-confidence or forming close ties with others.
That's why we created the classification system this report offers. We came up with a broad list of benefits of the arts and placed them into six categories. We designed these categories so they're both a measurement tool and a conversation starter. They provide a shared, objective language that the entire youth arts field can use.
These categories are based on interviews with alumni of 32 arts organizations in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, and included people who had been through an arts program more than 10 to 20 years earlier.
The benefits they cited fell into two broad categories of outcomes: relational outcomes and opportunity outcomes.
Relational outcomes are about how participants understand themselves, relate to others, and interact with their environment. Opportunity outcomes deal with how the arts prepare young people for success in school, career, and life.
Relational outcomes include discovering new interests, building problem solving skills, making friends, and finding a sense of physical and emotional safety. Over 95 percent of the people we interviewed reported these sorts of outcomes from their arts programs.
By contrast, opportunity outcomes include things like building technical skills, learning to participate in civic life, and exploring new career pathways. Over 90 percent of the people we interviewed reported having these types of opportunities stem from their involvement in the arts programs.
For each outcome, the report includes program components that are likely to support that outcome. For example, if you want to help young people build problem solving skills, find that outcome in the tables in the report. Take a look at the Program Components column and you'll see that opportunities to exercise leadership and investment in youth development can contribute to that outcome.
There are at least three ways to use this taxonomy. First, you can use it to design your youth arts program. To do this, select the outcomes that fit your mission and vision and find the design elements that could achieve those outcomes. You can consider adding such program elements to your program.
Second, you can look for program components that serve multiple outcomes. For example, you might want to help young people build lasting relationships—this is found in Table 2 of our report—and expose them to new career pathways, which is found in Table 6. Take a look at the program elements in both of those tables, and you'll see that mentorship programs can help achieve both outcomes. So you can home in on these elements and design a mentorship program that helps meet both of these outcomes.
Finally, you can use this report to determine what your program is doing well and where you might want to improve. Take a look at the outcomes you seek. Look at the program elements that contribute to those outcomes, and consider how well your program is delivering those elements.
We hope you find this guide helpful. If you have thoughts or feedback, share them with us on any of our social media channels here.
We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for your time and happy creating.
