The mission of Art Start is to nurture the voices, hearts and minds of NYC’s underserved youth through consistent, creative workshops inside homeless shelters, alternative to incarceration programs and partnering youth agencies.
Art Start began in the spring of 1991 when a handful of artists got together with children in NYC homeless shelters to connect through art. Since that moment, Art Start has brought the creative process to over 22,500 youth and enlisted over 11,600 volunteer teaching artists. The central tenet to the organization is to serve vulnerable NYC youth who are in highest need of creative opportunities and who are the least likely to receive them. The majority of Art Start programs bring the creative process directly to the places where youth reside. Art Start carries out its mission through three pillars of programming––Homeless Youth Outreach, Youth Offender Outreach and the Emerging Artists-in-Residency Program.
Word about Art Startʼs success has received national media attention. Features about Art Start have been portrayed on: The Oprah Winfrey Show, Bravoʼs documentary Stories of Arts for Change, and the 2003 CBS special, “Fulfilling the Dream.” The Sundance Channel debuted The Hip Hop Project, a feature-length documentary about Art Startʼs award-award-winning music program for teens in crisis, executive produced by Bruce Willis and Queen Latifah.
To learn more about Art Start visit http://www.art-start.org/ .