"I love ballet": arts incentives for adolescent health and community development

Art can be a transformative process that not only offers youth opportunities for self-expression, but enables them to connect to their communities as part of the healing process. Having a public role offers those who are often without power to have a voice and a presence. This chapter provides information on the Arts Incentives Program at the United South End Settlements, a therapeutic, arts-based youth and community development program working with high-risk girls ages eleven to eighteen. Young people engage in community building within the program and become agents of positive community change. In revitalizing their communities, they rebuild a sense of self as essential, valued, and creative, bringing together the resources of participants, agencies, and the community.