National Endowment for the Arts

• Agency Mission and Goals
• Activities and Priorities Relating to Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
• Collaborative Efforts
• Future Directions
• FY 1995 Funds

Agency Mission and Goals

The mission of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is to broaden public access to the arts and to expand opportunities for educational experiences in the arts for Americans of all ages. The NEA, in partnership with State and local arts agencies, arts organizations, foundations, the corporate community, and other government agencies, supports programs to benefit at-risk youth, their families, and their communities through involvement in the arts. Grants to organizations to support arts-based youth programs are typically awarded through the Education and Access and the Partnership, Planning, and Stabilization Divisions of the NEA.

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Activities and Priorities Relating to Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

The NEA supports, through grants to organizations, access projects that seek to expose participants to the arts, particularly those whose opportunities to participate in the arts may have been limited by education, geographic, ethnic, or economic constraints. Projects may include outreach projects that engage diverse communities in partnerships with both arts and nonarts institutions or organizations. The NEA encourages applications that propose new approaches and have the potential to serve as model projects. Typically the NEA provides support for arts-based youth programs through grants for projects or programs that are administered by nonprofit arts organizations and State and local arts agencies.

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Collaborative Efforts

The NEA is engaged in partnerships with other Federal agencies specifically to support programs for youth at risk of drugs and violence. They include:

• Pathways to Success, the NEA/Department of Justice partnership that funds afterschool and weekend programs for at-risk youth that utilize the arts, job skills, education, and recreation activities.
  
  
• Arts and Prevention, a cooperative initiative with the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) of the Department of Health and Human Services that promotes the inclusion of arts organizations in community drug prevention programs and services for youth.
  
  
• WritersCorps, the NEA partnership with the Corporation for National Service that supports 75 writers to work with inner-city youth and their families in the Bronx, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
  
  
• Partnership for Conflict Resolution Education in the Arts, the NEA/Department of Justice collaboration to provide education and training in conflict resolution skills to artists, administrators, and participants in arts-based youth projects.

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Future Directions

Although its appropriations were reduced by 39 percent in FY 1996, the National Endowment for the Arts continues to provide grant support to organizations for arts-based youth projects and to seek public and private partnerships as a means to demonstrate the value of the arts in working with at-risk youth.

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FY 1995 Funds

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