Youth Arts Alliance – YAA! – Juvenile Center Mural Project
Spring/summer 2014
TTM worked within 3 Michigan counties, Washtenaw, Monroe, and Livingston at the juvenile detention and residential treatment facilities to help produce 3 successful mural projects. Each mural was uniquely designed based on the input and participation from the youth housed in the facilities. The murals reflects their own personal and shared visions, goals, hopes, and dreams for their future.
Youth Arts Alliance! provides creative arts workshops inside juvenile detention and residential treatment facilities in southeast Michigan! The primary artistic and cultural objective is placemaking. This is beyond the commitment Youth Arts Alliance! has made to provide arts programming to youth who have very little access to arts resources in their neighborhoods; the creative spaces we make in residential and detention facilities and the immediate community have facilitated incredible processing through taking positive, artistic risks while exploring the issues that have brought youth into the Juvenile Justice system. Youth tell us they feel safe and free to express themselves.
Excellent project, and focus. Building a sense of belonging, identity, and developing new relationships while contributing to the larger community, offers opportunities with long term benefits for all youth, but is especially essential for at-risk youth. Thank you for what you do.