Causes: Arts & Culture, Children & Youth, Cultural & Ethnic Awareness, Youth Community Service Clubs, Youth Development Programs

Mission: Arts-kids inc. Provides after-school programming to students in summit, wasatch, salt lake, and uintah counties. Primary prevention programs, arts-kids and arts-teens are aimed at reducing substance abuse, suicide, depression, gang involvement and other child/teen tragedies by facilitating emotional and creative self-expression. Arts-kids, inc. Works with school guidance counselors to identify children and teens who are going through life challenges such as divorce or death in the family, learning disabilities, add or adhd. Students on the autism spectrum often participate in our program as well as children who just love art. Professional artists work with children and teens to facilitate the process of personal self-expression through projects in the visual arts, music, and dance. Before and after the art experience, children communicate with each other in a professionally facilitated group to talk about their feelings regarding their day, their intentions for the art activity, and th

Programs: See schedule o during the 2016-2017 fiscal year, arts-kids conducted after-school programming in summit, wasatch, salt lake, and uintah counties. More than 200 children were served. Thanks to a generous grant from the newfield exploration foundation, the program on the ute reservation expanded to include students in randlett, utah, as well as white rocks and fort duchesne. Arts-kids, inc. Delivered programming to 134 children ages 5-17 in winter and spring sessions, and a five-day summer camp for both arts-kids & arts-teens combined. A special arts-teens field trip was conducted in july. Virtually all enrolled were native americans. Sixteen artists, half of them native american, delivered a total of 22 expressive arts projects. The wasatch back/salt lake program, which serves students in salt lake, summit and wasatch counties, contracted this year due to the unanticipated departure of the executive director. Four schools were served in the fall of 2016 with expressive arts projects delivered by eight professional artists. Programming was discontinued in the spring of 2017 to give the board of trustees time to re-examine the organization's mission and strategic plan. A board member served pro bono as interim executive director and hired a grant writing consultant to ensure continuity of funding for the wasatch back/salt lake county program in the 2017-2018 academic year.