Arts for Healing and Justice Network
Model & Strategy
The Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN) provides structure and coordination for the collaborative work of community-based arts education organizations serving system-impacted youth in Los Angeles County. They create alternatives to incarceration, build resiliency and wellness, increase community health, eliminate recidivism, and center arts as a change strategy for young people, communities, and systems. AHJN has served 12,000 system-impacted, at-promise youth and youth-serving adults.
The Problem
Los Angeles County is home to the largest juvenile justice system in the nation, with over 500 youth under the jurisdiction of the Probation Department across 10 detention facilities. Justice-involved and at-promise youth represent some of the most underserved and marginalized populations, including racial and ethnic minorities, low-income populations, and those with physical and mental disabilities. The experience of incarceration can exacerbate existing mental health and social-emotional risks to youth development. Many strategies to reach youth often fail to account for the reality of their life circumstances and the importance of their identity and culture.
The Solution
Arts for Healing Justice Network envisions a future where youth are empowered, and the systems that serve them are transformed using arts as a foundational strategy and catalyst for change. At the heart of the AHJN model is the simple yet powerful notion that collaboration, art, and cultural engagement are transformative practices. AHJN is a collaborative network of arts education organizations serving system-impacted youth in LA County. Under AHJN, 2,000 youth a year receive high-quality arts education from 23 member agencies, including creative writing, spoken word, visual arts, theater, dance, digital media, and music programming. AHJN serves youth in detention and probation staff in probation-run facilities, using the arts as a strengths-based approach to give youth the outlet and voice needed to process their experiences and heal.
Additionally, AHJN supports young people as they exit incarceration and return to their communities — and offers advocacy training, mentorship, and paid internships to both systems-impacted and at-promise youth. Their unique programming invites systems-impacted youth to tell their stories to dismantle harmful systems and replace them with systems of care, healing, and justice. AHJN convenes their network members to establish best practices for working with this population, widening youth support networks and leveraging their collective impact to increase scale and capacity. In addition to their work with system-impacted youth, AHJN delivers healing-informed arts education in schools and community sites to promote the well-being of youth and youth-serving adults who have not been impacted by the system.
Elida Ledesma is serving as Executive Director, having previously worked with Arts for Healing and Justice Network as Associate Director. Elida has deep experience at AHJN overseeing the creation of its members’ co-designed Shared Theory of Practice, replicating the network model in other regions and across the nation, and supporting AHJN’s healing-informed arts training offered to various county agencies.
IMPACT
Since their start in 2016, AHJN has served 12,000 youth and youth-serving adults across all programs.
AHJN has established an effective mechanism for distributing public dollars to community-based art organizations and is supporting various regions in adopting this model, including San Diego, Ohio, New York, and New Orleans.
AHJN Youth Advocates were integral in advancing LA County’s vision for Youth Justice Reimagined, which involved the creation of the new Department of Youth Development.
