Art from Ashes, Inc.

Program name
Phoenix Rising Poetry and Spoken Word	details
Upcoming Programs	details

Phoenix Rising Poetry and Spoken Word

Art from Ashes provides creative therapies to marginalized youth. At the Phoenix Rising workshops, the benefits of expression, connection and healing are long-term for the participants. Our guided poetry writing workshops focus on these three vital processes to restore a sense of value and purpose to high-risk youth:

expression – the cathartic purging of thoughts and emotions that negatively affect identity;

connection – youth are exposed to poets and artists of various cultural backgrounds and learn to develop relationships with them, with the facilitator(s), and with other young people in the group;

healing – restoration through self-awareness and the formation of a more positive identity using the creative power of the written and spoken word.

A typical Phoenix Rising poetry and creative arts session is eight weeks, two hours a week for a maximum of 20 young people, culminating in a public performance

Definition of short-term success

1. To develop our training program in order to work with hundreds of collaborators and thousands of Colorado youth.

2. To continue to gather evaluation data that confirms the impact our program has had and continues to have on youth behaviors and attitudes as a result of their participation.

3. To market our approach as an Evidence Based program that can be used in a variety of youth settings, including the Juvenile Justice system.

Definition of long-term success

To establish or support institutes for creative arts therapies worldwide, with therapists who work not only with private clients and youth organizations, but who will be able to respond to worldwide catastrophes that create helplessness and fear in the affected youth, such as the Columbine tragedy, the 9/11 terrorist attack and the Virginia Tech massacre. AfA will have at ready an emergency team that will provide healing therapies to address PTSD and other stress-related disorders among the affected young people.

Program success monitored by

Independent evaluations conducted by an outside researcher and other assessment tools that will determine the long-term impact of our program on the attitudes and behaviors of the participating youth.

Examples or evidence of program success

In February 2008, the Colorado Council on the Arts, in collaboration with the National Research Center, released an independent study conducted on AfA’s youth participants at The Spot Urban Youth Center. The results were impressive: 84% of youth surveyed said they think the arts are more important because they attended the program; 86% said they practice their artistic skills on their own more; 93% said they were better at listening to other people; 73% said they became more interested in going to school, while 93% felt they could make more of a difference.

Not only are the youth significantly impacted by the program, but testimonials from facilitators, collaborators, guest poets and artists, and thousands of audience members who have attended events and presentations attest to the power of the program.

Upcoming Programs

The Art from Ashes vision is to institute a team of creative therapists who work in youth detention centers, urban centers, recreational centers, residential treatment centers, jails and other institutions that serve high-risk youth, providing poetry therapy, visual arts therapy, music therapy, dance/movement therapy, massage therapy, drama therapy, and somatic therapy.

Definition of short-term success

The institution of each of the seven modalities that utilizes its own curriculum and team of trained facilitators designed to empower the lives of high-risk youth.

Definition of long-term success

Since the long-term vision of AfA is to have all seven modalities running concurrently, we will be able to have teams of creative professionals working in conjunction to provide therapeutic workshops for severely damaged youth, and will be able to handle larger numbers of youth at crisis sites around the world. AfA also will have at ready an emergency team that will provide healing therapies to address PTSD and other stress-related disorders among the affected young people.

Program success monitored by

Once we have achieved more financial viability as an agency, we will institute the other modalities and will use established evaluation tools to determine our impact on the youth in the community. We also will continue to review the trained creative professionals to determine any additional needs the organization can meet in order to further support the goals of each of the programs.

Examples or evidence of program success

In process of development.

Comments

Executive Director Program Comment

Provided by Catherine O'Neill Thorn on 2/1/2008

Art from Ashes established our poetry and spoken word youth programs as a precursor to six other creative programs designed to save the lives of indigent youth and youth in crisis.