Healing-Based Arts Education
In 2021, The Center for Arts Education (CAE) merged with Partnership with Children (PWC), integrating CAE’s art education programs into PWC’s trauma-informed care model. PWC is a 115-year-old organization that exists to strengthen the emotional, social, and cognitive skills of children in NYC to succeed in school, society, and life. We have done that by placing licensed social workers in public schools to provide mental health counseling and community-based programming. The CAE merger has served to enhance PWC’s long-standing mental health programming by integrating trauma-informed arts education services into our existing school-based programs. Today, we operate as one organization under the Partnership with Children umbrella to provide trauma-informed counseling, community-based programs, and healing-based arts education to thousands of NYC students.
The Arts in Education Department at Partnership with Children works to infuse healing arts into Partnerships’ work with children across New York City by providing high-quality, culturally responsive, community-based arts instruction to foster the holistic development of children in our schools. As a supportive pillar of PWC school-based programming, we use arts to address the trauma that impacts students’ lives, while simultaneously strengthening the ecosystem of relationships surrounding them in their school environments. Our work supports students’ abilities to analyze, share, and interpret their experiences, assuring they are active contributors in shaping their communities and futures.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, PWC provided healing-based arts education in 37 different schools across all five boroughs, reaching over 2,384 students. PWC’s healing-based arts education is integrated into NYC public schools, and can be delivered in-school, afterschool, and during summer programming, supporting artistic pathways from kindergarten through college and career.
Student Voice and Engagement (SVE):
Comprehensive healing-based arts program where PWC social workers and teaching artists work collaboratively with classroom teachers over the course of the school year to utilize the theatre arts to build English Language Arts and social-emotional learning skills. In addition to closely collaborating with social workers, participating teaching artists are trained in culturally responsive and trauma-informed techniques. The program works with students beginning in 3rd grade and continues with them through 5th grade.
School-Based Residencies:
Connects schools and students with teaching artists who provide a series of standards-based arts education workshops intended to develop community, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Tailored to the needs of each collaborating school, connects to material being explored in other content areas, and can be delivered in-school, after-school, and during summer programming.
Parents as Art Partners (PAAP):
Provides students and their families with hands-on art workshops aimed to increase parent and guardian engagement in their child’s education and school community.
Career Development Program (CDP):
An internship and mentorship program that provides high school seniors with career readiness training and internships in creative industries across the city. This program, started by CAE over two decades ago, boasts more than 700 graduates who have been mentored to pursue successful careers at NYC cultural institutions and creative businesses, enriching the city with their professionalism and perspectives.
Arts And Healing Training:
A comprehensive teaching artist training offered through Partnership with Children for teaching artists working in NYC schools where artists explore trauma informed practices, teaching art through a healing lens, and ways to deliberately center social emotional competencies in arts educational work with students.