Written by Hannah E. Curtis
With support from the City’s Innovation & Performance team, Human Services Department, and Seattle Public Schools, the Office of Arts & Culture has initiated the Creative Youth Development (CYD) Secondary Arts Project.
The CYD Secondary Arts Project invests in high quality, culturally responsive arts programs at schools that have a disproportionate number of students experiencing homelessness and housing instability, to promote creative learning and educational engagement. To begin this process, a field scan of existing materials and literature was conducted to:
- Examine best practices of CYD,
- Identify effective and culturally responsive impact and assessment strategies and tools,
- Determine which types of data collection and research methods best fit with the goals of the project,
- Provide empirical evidence that CYD positively impacts factors associated with student success, and
- Provides overview information about homeless and unstably housed youth in Seattle/King County.
Creative Youth Development: Arts Strategies for Engaging Unstably Housed and Homeless Youth makes the case that arts education in schools, alongside the many other benefits, can potentially provide a radical space of intervention where students experiencing unstable housing and homelessness have a safe space to belong, learn new skills, explore their identity, and make connections to their teachers, peers, schools, and larger community.
