Arts Leadership Pilot Project and Well-Being of Urban Youth

Background and Purpose: Alongside historic and current events, issues within systemic structures indicate that racially marginalized youth are more likely to be treated unjustly, thus increasing their vulnerability to risk behaviors and well-being (Nicholson & Smith, 2020). Research has shown that leadership skills, civic engagement, and feelings of empowerment can significantly affect the well-being of youth (Villareal et al., 2018). Creative arts-based activities are likely to result in social, emotional, psychological well-being, and collective empowerment (Christens & Dolan, 2011, Pufahl et al., 2021).

Three art organizations and researchers collaborated to develop a summer internship program using a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) model. Mixed method evaluation research examined participants’ individual and collective empowerment by increasing their technical art skill, social and personal skills, work-readiness skills, and developing social consciousness and civic engagement.

Methods: Seventy-five young apprentices were recruited for the visual arts and leadership training program. Pre-post data was collected from fifty-one participants using convenient sampling via online surveys. Forty percent of instruction and focus group interviews occurred virtually as the project was implemented during COVID-19 pandemic (summer-fall 2021). SPSS was used to analyze quantitative data to identify participants pre-post variances. Informed by the phenomenological framework, qualitative data was analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2012) six-step coding process and inter-rater reliability was established.

Results: Fifty-one participants completed the survey, about 60% of the participants were from racial/ethnic minority groups, 73% of the respondents were female, mean age of participants was 16.12 years and 86% of these participants were in high school. Participants self-reported significant increase in verbal communication (Pre M=3.48; Post M=3.78), networking skills (Pre M=3.33; Post M=3.47), in their sense of personal attachment to the community, (Pre M=3.50; Post M=3.64) and leadership (Pre M=3.54; Post M=3.89). Focus group interviews were completed by six participants, and it was identified that the program empowered these participants as they developed their skills in art and leadership. Five major themes emerged characterizing their experiences: (1) Participants gained confidence and decreased their anxiety, (2) study participants opened to using new art mediums, (3) they began to think of themselves as potential leaders, as one participant stated that “Us kids are making a big impact on [city], and I would like more people to do the same”. Professional skill development in theme four was seen as an important part of their development. Theme five identified that equity was built by providing apprentices with the tools and opportunities to make professional art.

Conclusions and Implications: These results have implications at micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Transformative learning pedagogies utilizing arts as a medium of expression can lead to transformative experiences for participants, thus empowering them to design social change (Bentz & O’Brien, 2019). Extending this program to a full school year will help to build a pipeline for school aged apprentices. A plausible explanation as to why we did not see an increase in some of the domains assessed from pre- to post-survey might be because respondents overestimated their abilities on the pre-test (i.e., Dunning-Kruger effect).