From our Executive Director: Our Vision for the Future

In August of 2021, a small group of ArtsConnection stakeholders – alumni, artists, and staff – met to begin discussing and envisioning what ArtsConnection’s future could be. It was clear that new and challenging questions would need to be asked as we planned our roadmap for the future. That kicked off a year-long process, during the 2021-22 school year, of developing our strategic plan for 2023-2025.

Our vision is bold

We honor our long history in the NYC arts education landscape, while we acknowledge the need for change. We are guided by our values and commitment to community care, inclusion, diversity, equity, and access – those are our North Star and inform all our decisions from programmatic ones, to staffing, to how we run the organization.

The artists and young people with whom we work have been at the center of this process from the very beginning, and they remain involved now. On November 1st we were proud to host our strategic plan launch event at Centerview Partners. On our panel were 3 alumni – Omar Perez, Jasmine Unay, and Alen Prospere – who spoke about their ArtsConnection experiences with the audience present in person and via zoom. Each offered a unique perspective: Jasmine sharing how art was eliminated from her middle school and that’s how and why she found ArtsConnection; Alen who said he appreciated the organization’s “constant drive for improvement,” and Omar, self-described as “a product of the 80s in the South Bronx,” and who has been involved with ArtsConnection as a grade school participant, an alum, and now as a teaching artist.

With this new strategic plan, we are building a roadmap and network of people and organizations committed to helping young people move on from our programs with improved skills at navigating their own education and beyond, using creativity as their resource. We are so grateful for everyone who has been a part of ArtsConnection’s history and community. We hope you will continue with us on this journey, as we strive to grow our impact, deepen our engagement with schools, work with more teens and youth across the city (and, with time, beyond it). If you have any questions about our strategic plan, or would like to learn more, please reach out to me at .