Hollywood Arts is a unique visual art center that provides opportunities for at-risk, homeless and runaway youth to understand themselves and their own creativity in a safe and supportive
environment. Programs at Hollywood Arts emphasize hands-on learning, apprentice relationships, team work and technical skills and match artists with youth in supportive studio environments. The studio space at Hollywood Arts has one of the only fully-equipped recording studios, digital labs, and ceramics studios in the district dedicated for the use of at-risk and homeless teenagers. The studio space also includes workshops for the visual arts including drawing and painting with multiple media, music, dance and theater. At night we have drum circles for the youth, poetry reading and other performances.
FOUNDER'S MESSAGE
Welcome to Hollywood Arts and thank you for your support.
Hollywood Arts is a new nonprofit art center located in the heart of Hollywood. Our mission is to use interactions with the arts both therapeutically and to teach life and job-readiness skills that will
empower at-risk and homeless teenagers to use their own talents to transition off the streets and change their lives.
We’d like your help.
Before you consider helping us build Hollywood Arts, though, we would like to ask you to close your eyes and take a few minutes to remember a meaningful experience you had with an artistic or creative
activity. Perhaps it was a performance you attended that moved you and the whole audience to dance in the aisles; or perhaps it was a painting you saw that stopped you in your tracks; a song that
opened your heart; a quilt you made that holds your family’s memories; or the sound of a room full of hands clapping while you take your third bow during your high-school play.
We ask that you remember these feelings—these feelings of pleasure, validation and community—when you think about the teenagers we work with.
These teenagers do not have the opportunities we take for granted. Our clients are the teenagers sleeping in the stairwells of your favorite local business. Our clients have run away from abusive homes,
have come of age in a foster care system that can not provide for them as teenagers, our clients are living on the street, considering gang life, and hustling whatever they can for food.
We at Hollywood Arts believe what you know in your heart to be true. That experiences with the arts, especially for youth, promote healthy development and pro-social behavior. That experiences
with the arts make you happy, reflective, and empowered. That experiences with the arts create new community, build self-esteem and along the way, can even teach some important life skills such as
critical thinking and team work.
We ask that you remember your own soul-enriching and perhaps life-changing experience when you think about the teenagers with whom we work. We ask that you help us build Hollywood Arts in order to give
these teenagers the chance to transition into a place of self-respect and accomplishment, a place where, with our help, they are to able to stand stronger and to take their own steps towards a better
life. We believe what you know in your heart to be true, that experiences with the arts can save young lives.
Dylan Kendall Ceramist, Executive Director Hollywood Arts
