Creative wellbeing: mental health and wellness for youth in county systems in Los Angeles

The Challenge

To create an arts-based programme that supports the wellbeing of young people impacted by County systems.

The Purpose

Through decades of arts-based programming, research, and experience, LA County has seen firsthand how healing-informed arts activities provide youth with an opportunity to learn new skills and express their thoughts or ideas creatively and therapeutically.

Since 2014, the LA County Department of Arts and Culture has worked with a growing number of LA County government agencies to utilise arts education, with a healing-centred lens, to support young people impacted by County systems. 

The model offers non-traditional strategies for promoting mental health and wellness that include culturally relevant and healing-centred arts-based workshops for youth, as well as professional development, coaching and emotional support for the adults who work with them. 

The Solution

Launched in 2018, Creative Wellbeing is an approach for building communities of wellness, especially for youth impacted, or at risk of being impacted, by County systems. This could be the justice system, incarceration, the welfare system, or the foster care system, all of which disproportionately affect youth and communities of colour due to systemic and structural racial inequity and bias – as well as the adults who support them.

The model offers non-traditional strategies for promoting mental health and wellness that include culturally relevant and healing-centred arts-based workshops for youth, as well as professional development, coaching and emotional support for the adults who work with them. 

Creative Wellbeing is a strategic collaboration between the Department of Arts and Culture, the Office of Child Protection (OCP), the Department of Mental Health (DMH), the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS), philanthropy, and the Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN), a network of several arts organisations that provide teaching artists and program implementation across a range of artistic disciplines, cultural competencies and geographic locations. Together, partners provide content expertise, training for artists, curriculum development support, and help scale strategic partnerships. 

LADAC leads programme management and implementation and coordinates stakeholder and partnership engagement. The DMH provided a $1.5 million seed grant to launch the Creative Wellbeing project. 

The first project began during the 2019-20 school year with Creative Wellbeing: Arts, Schools, and Resilience, bringing partner departments to implement healing-informed arts education activities within select public schools known to have a high number of foster, probation and at-risk youth. 

The Impact

Creative Wellbeing then expanded to include not only school districts but other community and County-contracted sites. In 2020, LADAC and its partners began working with DCFS to embed the Creative Wellbeing approach into services for adult staff and foster youth in care centres such as Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Programs (STRTPs). Creative Wellbeing programming is also being implemented through collaborations with the DMH Partners in Suicide Prevention, Psychiatric Social Workers Association, and the Los Angeles County Office of Education. 

Through the Creative Wellbeing Curriculum, young people can engage in weekly arts tutoring including creative writing, dance, music, theatre, visual arts, and/or media arts. Through these experiences, they can explore themes of identity and self-expression, connection and purpose. The programme also engages educators, County employees, mental health providers, staff of community-based organisations, and caregivers in arts-based professional development and facilitated self-care sessions. 

As the Creative Wellbeing approach and programme continues, the Department of Arts and Culture is focused on foundational components for future growth: replication, partnership-building, deepening evaluation activities, and identifying additional sources of funding. 

Source: World Cities Culture Report 2022

Images Courtesy © City of Los Angeles