The purpose of Arts Connect is to help at-risk young women realize their potential, make healthy life choices, and become active participants in the community by coupling hands-on arts projects with a team of professional artists and other adult mentors in a Museum environment. Arts Connect was developed by the Museum of Glass for girls between the ages of 11-17 who are in detention and on probation in Pierce County, Washington.

Arts Connect begins in detention with a weekly, day-long art class and continues with a weekly post-release art-making internship at the Museum. Guided by a professional artist with a team of professional guest artists, young women develop their creative voices with an emphasis on social and leadership skills. Hands-on projects and related contemporary artworks are paired with discussions and writing assignments about identity, social issues and healthy lifestyles. At the completion of each 8 – 12 week session, the young women participate in a public showcase of their art in which they serve as exhibition guides and performers, allowing them to experience a range of ways in which their ideas and feelings can educate, inspire, and affect the greater community.

This October, Arts Connect will receive national recognition as Rebecca Larkin (the Pierce County Juvenile Court Probation Officer who has been deeply involved with the program for two years now) and I travel to Philadelphia to present at the National Arts in Criminal Justice Conference.

According to the conference organizer, who has been searching for presenters for 2 years, there is no other program in the country like Arts Connect! Our model—a museum partnering with a detention center to provide arts-based intervention and probation alternatives—is one-of-a-kind. We are very proud of this innovation! Arts Connect is beginning its fourth year of post-release arts workshops at the Museum. As we look to the future, we are particularly interested in expanding the program to serve boys and also to train other juvenile detention facilities and non-profit organizations like the Museum—in Washington and around the nation—to use this model as a sentencing alternative for their girls and boys.

This summer, at an end-of-session showcase, I had a touching moment with the grandparent of a girl in Arts Connect. This girl had come out of a very tight shell during the course of the program, making the greatest growth I’ve witnessed in such a short amount of time (about nine weeks). After introducing myself to the grandmother, and telling her what a pleasure it had been to have her granddaughter in Arts Connect, she took my hand and began to cry. She said they were all so worried about their girl and couldn’t believe how far she had come. The Grandmother explained that at the start of her Arts Connect experience, her granddaughter was deeply afraid of speaking to an audience and had even avoided reading out loud from her desk in school. Her family called this her “disability”. That Friday in June, this same girl got up on stage and, with confidence and glee, for two audiences of 40 – 50 people each, performed a story she had written and choreographed all by herself. These are the moments that remind me what real change we are creating in the work we are doing here at the Museum.

Since its inception in 2001, Arts Connect in detention has served almost 1000 girls in Pierce County Washington; the post-release component at the Museum has helped over 85 girls stay out of jail and find a meaningful, healthy life in the community since it began in spring 2004. For images and more information, please visit www.museumofglass.org/education/arts-connect/