On average Arts Street serves over 150 unique young adults, ages 14-24, over 10,000 contact hours each year, with 93% self-reporting as low income and 92% reporting BIPOC. Youth are primarily referred to programing through community partners including Denver Housing Authority, Denver Public School Career Connect and Colorado High School Charter and come from underrepresented and marginalized communities.
Evaluations: Throughout our programing we utilize multiple evaluations tools to assure that we are providing the best training and social emotional opportunities to each participant. Our main evaluation results come from a survey tool created by the National Research Center (NRC) for the Colorado Alliance for Creative Youth Development. All Arts Street participants complete this survey at the end of programming, and it is submitted anonymously. In addition, we measure long-term impact at 3-months and 1-year post program completion, around education and employment outcomes.
However, we believe our biggest impact can’t be measured with statistics but is from the words of some of our participants.
“Arts Street helped me understand who I am as a person.”
“I love the opportunities they provide. Arts Street has helped me grow in almost every way possible: artistically, mentally, and financially. I now feel more confident in myself and my skills.”
“What I like best about coming to Arts Street is being able to be creative and express myself through the projects we do.”
“[What I like about coming to Arts Street is] Being able to create great memories as well as having the creative freedom to work on many types of mediums and having a safe space to come when things at home are rough.”
Impact: In 2021, Arts Street served over 150 unique youth, ages 13-21, over 5,500 contact hours with 93% self-reporting as low income and 92% reporting BIPOC. Youth were primarily referred to programing through community partners including Denver Public School Career Connect, Colorado High School Charter and Denver Housing Authority and came from underrepresented and marginalized communities. We served 139 youth in our creative industry academies in the areas of graphic design, photography, digital animation, digital design and traditional visual art techniques. The academies saw a 93% completion rate, with 94% showing an increase in industry skills. We had 15 interns placed who were responsible for specific project management and more intensive creative industry skill training. We had 100% of internship completions with 100% of those youth staying in school or graduating. Through our mentorship program we served 32 youth during out of school hours and these youth were eligible to be part of our EntrepreMURALship team and earned incentives for their work on client projects. 100% of mentees stayed in school or graduated.
Evaluations: Throughout our programing we utilize multiple evaluations tools to assure that we are providing the best training and social emotional opportunities to each participant. Our main evaluation results come from a survey tool created by the National Research Center (NRC) for the Colorado Alliance for Creative Youth Development. All Arts Street participants complete this survey at the end of programming, and it is submitted anonymously. Here are some of the overall results from this grant period:
Real-World Experience:
• 100% of our youth artists completed the client projects.
• 92% of participants said that coming to Arts Street helped them understand the importance of arriving to appointments and work on time.
Creative Industry & Academic Skills:
• 94% of students improved their industry skills with many learning totally new software that will be useful in the creative industry and in schoolwork.
• Based on self-evaluation results, 100% said they gained a new artistic skill.
Social and Emotional Skills:
• 100% agreed they are more prepared to handle whatever comes their way.
• 96% of participants said that because of Arts Street they are better at taking responsibility for their actions.
• 81% of participants said that Arts Street helped them understand that someone who looks or sounds different than them may not be that different at all.
• 100% of participants said they feel staff care about them and can be trusted.