Conflict Resolution Education - National Criminal Justice Reference ...

The program’s partnerships bring together the San
Antonio Departments of Arts and Cultural Affairs,
the Youth Services Division of Community Initiatives,
the Southwest Independent School District,
and the law enforcement and higher education communities.
The collaboration of the various city agencies
and community resources has resulted in a
multidisciplinary program that combines innovative
arts activities with conflict resolution and social
skills training and the delivery of social services.
NEA and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention (OJJDP) have entered into
a collaborative evaluation of this program to determine
its effectiveness in decreasing juvenile
adjudication and delinquency, increasing academic
performance and school attendance, developing
the problem-solving processes of conflict resolution,
and improving the self-esteem, social skills,
and family relationships of at-risk youth.
In the Urban smARTS program, each school is
assigned a team of three professional artists, four
caseworkers, several volunteers, and one teacher/
counselor who work with the youth for the 14-week
program. Program goals include:
♦ Diverting at-risk youth from the juvenile justice
system through the arts and conflict resolution
education.
♦ Improving social behavior and skills through the
arts and case management teamwork.
♦ Improving academic performance and commitment
to school through the arts.
♦ Developing art skills and providing art opportunities
for performance and exhibitions.
Pathways to Success Program
A collaboration of OJJDP, the Bureau of Justice
Assistance, and NEA, the Pathways to Success
Program promotes vocational skills, entrepreneurial
initiatives, recreation, and arts education during
afterschool, weekend, and summer hours by making
a variety of opportunities available to at-risk youth.
Under this program, 2-year grants have been awarded
to five sites. The four listed below include arts and
conflict resolution education:
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♦ The Stopover Services (SOS) Playback Arts-
Based Delinquency Prevention program in Newport,
Rhode Island, provides an afterschool arts
program for youth ages 13 to 18 from local public
housing. The youth participate in peer-to-peer
support and youth/adult partnerships that help
build healthy family relationships and a sense
of community through the media of visual arts,
dance, and drama.
♦ Project CLEAR (Collaboration Leads to Enhanced
Achievement and Resiliency), located in
New York City, provides extended day programs
to students and their families in two elementary
schools with activities including the arts, recreation,
and academic tutoring.
♦ The Anchorage School District and the Out-
North Theater have collaborated to work with
students to write, produce, and perform plays for
the community based on their life experiences.
♦ The Aspira Youth Sanctuary program addresses
the problems of Latino youth ages 12 to 14 residing
in migrant camps through the teaching of art,
folklore, dance, recreation activities, and parent
workshops.
Conflict resolution education is incorporated into
each of these programs, because many of the youth
live in neighborhoods characterized by poverty,
drugs, and crime where even minor disputes often
escalate to violence. These programs lend themselves
to a discussion of other ways to resolve disputes,
which are a normal part of life and will occur
naturally during interactions with other individuals,
both within and outside the program.
Arts and Prevention Projects
The Department of Education’s Safe and Drug-
Free Schools Program funded the development
of several arts and prevention projects. Developed
by the Learning Systems Group, these projects
have incorporated many building blocks that
strengthened young people’s ability to work together
and to learn and practice the conflict resolution
processes of negotiation, mediation, and consensus
decisionmaking. Following are descriptions of several
arts and prevention activities.