KN2 A.R.T.S. provides students and organizations with hands-on training and innovative, effective tools to strengthen their efforts to artistically provide quality information for all involved.
Our approach is three-pronged:
- Scholar Empowerment - Provide students with training in various art forms, leadership, and advocacy; teach them how to document and research issues that impact their lives; and help them to use their images and voices to advocate for positive solutions to those issues.
- Public Awareness - Informing and engaging the public by using students' art projects to create exclusive exhibits that can be shown in galleries, libraries, coffee shops, and other public spaces to increase awareness of the issues facing young people. Improved public awareness benefit us all, leading to a better/well educated community, a stronger by in throughout, and a significant step toward providing an equal opportunity for all.
- Policy Change - Partnering with specific advocacy and community organizations to implement creative strategies that use youth arts and voice to strengthen their campaigns to inform surrounding communities.
The benefits of this approach:
- Advocacy organizations become more effective by incorporating into their campaigns both visual imagery and voices of the youth who are affected by the policies they seek to change.
Teaching the public is better informed about conditions surrounding the issue and becomes more supportive of, and engaged in, reform efforts.
- Scholars learn to express themselves artistically and recognize the power of their art and their voices to produce measurable, meaningful change.
