Culturally competent and asset-based arts education and community convenings, in partnership with juvenile detention centers, school systems, LAPD, and community-based organizations.
Mission: Homeboy Art Academy challenges systems of oppression by centering life experiences and cultural knowledge of impacted communities to inspire transformation and reclaim self-agency.
Vision: Homeboy Art Academy envisions a future where system impacted communities create and lead a just world.
A division of Homeboy Industries (HBI), Homeboy Art Academy (HAA) strives to extend the mission of providing hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated youth and adults, by securing a space in which the Arts can be the central modality to healing and transformation. Homeboy Art Academy challenges systems of oppression by centering life experiences and cultural knowledge of impacted communities to inspire transformation and reclaim self-agency.
HAA is a trauma-informed arts center that provides culturally competent and asset-based arts education and community convenings, serving 75,000 system-impacted youth and adults each year in the Los Angeles area. Our partnerships include juvenile detention centers, school systems, LAPD, and community-based organizations. Our program is broken up into the following categories:
- Prevention: In partnership with city-wide efforts to prevent youth from joining gangs, school systems, and Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) who may be working with disengaged youth, We continue to work with Parks and Recreation to help keep 15-18 engage through the Arts. In this we also provide services through our partnerships with LAUSD. HAA aims to train service providers in trauma-informed care and introduce art tools to better engage, understand, and support their efforts. Additionally, HAA is open as an after-school drop in center for youth who do not want to go home or need a place to call home.
- Diversion: An alternative to incarceration, HAA provides mentorship, art and healing workshops to youth who would traditionally be sentenced to juvenile halls or probation and may already be part of the foster care system.
- Intervention: The majority of HAA programming is aimed to serve those already past “at-risk” and living in pure crisis. Intervention efforts include:
- Pre-release: Build and foster relationships inside juvenile detention camps, and juvenile halls by providing weekly workshops.
- Post-release: As an extension of Homeboy Industries, HAA is structured to engage, receive, and support the intentional work needed for those who come from the cycle of incarceration and gang-membership, providing them with cultural arts, cultural knowledge, and spaces to explore and transform their pain and identity. HAA opens its doors to provide intensive mentorship, arts educations, field experiences to program participants from 9am to noon, five times a week. Intervention efforts also include introduction to leadership development and civic engagement.
Healing, Transformation,
Leadership, Training
There is power in the arts, our goal is to make arts accessible as a tool for healing and transformation. Through meaningful creativity, Imagination will begin to take shape in bringing new perspectives and awareness for personal growth and leadership development by contributing meaningful change to the workplace and community.
Homeboy Art Academy Genuinely brings Intentional Healing to Communities Daily through its unique Cultural Arts approach.
Homeboy Industries offers almost forty classes/groups each week, covering a wide range of topics. Homeboy Art Academy as a new entity has taken on the challenge to utilize the arts as part of a healing journey for their trainees and community. Through various arts practices in this approach we seek to develop youth and adult leaders, by creating access into a creative workforce.
G.A.N.G (Genuine Art Narratives Given) Intervention Through the Arts (Approach)
Intended for the gang-involved, this tailored approach helps participants navigate gang subculture in order to move beyond it. We will utilize various art disciplines to challenge the gang subculture code of conduct and redefine the belief system.
The Art Gang (Re-Entry) Intervention
Identity, Culture, Leadership Is a program that utilizes art disciplines and storytelling as a vehicle to direct our life narratives. Elders will lead us on a historical landscape of Los Angeles in the spirit of the native peoples and share stories passed down from our black and brown ancestors. Instructors will also walk us through a social justice timeline through the Civil Rights and Chicano Movements. Through a variety of artist-led arts and culture workshops, we will gain a greater understanding of our stories and the means to achieve self-advocacy and justice.
CONVIVIR Spanish (Verb): Prevention “To Live together”
A trailblazing intergenerational art class bringing middle and high school youth and their parents together for collaboration. Participants engage in various art disciplines while also creating space for intergenerational dialogue. Through this creative process, community wisdom that might otherwise be lost is passed down in a safe environment that values and validates the voices of each generation.
Youth Adult Leadership Development Program (Diversion)
This program helps youth identify excluding factors in systems and advocate for change. Drawing from our own experiences and various art practices, we gather relevant information to help inform us of the systemic issues which stunt the growth of art advocates and leaders within communities. We challenge the status quo in order to create more opportunities in the creative art economy, art spaces, art advocacy foundations, and institutions.
To find out more about our
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SUPPORT US
If you want further info please reach out to homeboyartacademy@homeboyindustries.org or call (323) 685-8005. Donate directly to Homeboy Arts Academy below.