Our Programs
Artistic Noise works with youth while they’re incarcerated and when they return home to their community. We provide continuity for these young people and help them build essential leadership skills through art.
Art and Entrepreneurship Program (A&E)
Taking place in our Harlem Storefront Studio, this is a community program for youth to develop their creative abilities. Led by a Teaching Artist, A&E youth learn artistic techniques in different media, study contemporary artists working with issues of social justice, and produce an independent body of work throughout the year.
In addition to their art curriculum, the A&E program centers around workforce development by providing fundamental job skills and a weekly support stipend to our youth.
If you would like to participate in, or refer a youth to this program, please complete the interest form HERE.
Partnership Programs
Studio Art Workshops in Juvenile Detention Facilities
These weekly workshops led by Teaching Artist provide incarcerated youth with a safe and structured environment to share their stories visually. The priority of these programs is to support incarcerated youth by providing them with the means to document and process their complex feelings, while developing their abilities for creative expression and interpretation. Youth re-entering their community are able to maintain connection and are eligible to join our community programs.
Studio Art Workshops with Youth on Probation
The objective of this program led by our licensed Art Therapist is for youth to cultivate an authentic and grounded identity while working towards a deeper level of self-awareness. Utilizing a clinical rationale, we collaboratively consider goals, strengths and challenges to guide how individual and group sessions are conducted. Through the process of making art, we create opportunities wherein the youth can reflect upon their experiences to develop coping and communication skills to self-regulate one's emotions.
For partnership program inquiries, please contact Calder Zwicky: calderzwicky@artisticnoise.org
Art Therapy
Tenets of Art Therapy are interwoven into every aspect of the programming at Artistic Noise. Clinical rationale, which considers goals, strengths and challenges, guides how individual and group sessions are conducted. The group is tasked with the care for and responsibility to the group itself. Through modeling, reflection and redirection from the staff, the group practices creating and sustaining integration, safety and maturity within the group dynamic. The group learns to create the environment that is most beneficial to their need of support and acceptance. Individual art therapy provides an opportunity for the verbal and sensory processing of traumatic material. Sessions are spent identifying and exploring various emotions, discussing family and social relationships, and developing methods to regulate emotion. That being said, the youth are given control over the content of the sessions and often share the immense freedom they feel from simply "having someone to talk to." Also key to the clinical programming at Artistic Noise is the importance of building a support system for the youth. Staff at Artistic Noise connect the youth with additional resources (employers, case managers, social workers, mentors) based on their needs so as to continue to build their support network. The internalization of these consistent support systems negates the isolation they experience and creates a sense of wholeness and acceptance.
To learn more about Art Therapy at Artistic Noise, please contact Victoria Hristoff victoria@artisticnoise.org.
The Mural Project: CCNY x SVA
The Mural Project has provided the young people of Artistic Noise with an opportunity to openly claim space and leave their mark in reparative ways. Throughout the course of the collaborative project, the young artists successfully collaborate with the public, and engage with the community through diverse interventions. This engagement includes sharing stories and experiences on their terms, educating individuals on their creative process, achieving a sense of accomplishment, and developing leadership skills. The ego-support provided through collaboration offers positive reinforcement and an opportunity to develop a healthy and productive identity as an artist. Receiving public support encourages the young people to understand their needs are important when historically the system has told them otherwise.
Each programmatic year, Artistic Noise partners with the MPS Art Therapy Department at the School of Visual Arts. A&E’s mural project in collaboration with SVA has successfully celebrated five iterations, and is currently in its sixth. As a result of adaptations embraced as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, facilitators have prioritized a needed flexibility that has added dynamic layers to the ever growing project. 2021 brought forth City College of New York’s Masters Art Education Department as an additional collaborator. Being in close community with the art education department of CCNY enriches our ideals of balancing the skills of art educators and art therapists for the mutual benefit of our participants.