Arts United is Young Audience’s comprehensive effort to examine and improve our programming, leadership, and operations with a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. 

YA continually strives to create spaces that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive to all students. YA is committed to providing students of all identities, backgrounds, and experiences with arts education.

Our core understandings:

• As an organization that brings arts education into schools, we understand that our work exists within systems that perpetuate inequities, biases, stereotypes, and racism.
• We believe that the arts are powerful tools to remove barriers of inequality.
• We understand that our role is to provide transformative experiences for students, families, and educators within the four walls our artists are working in—whether it’s a school auditorium, a classroom, faculty lounge, community setting, or virtual space. 

With YA artists, our aim is for students to imagine new possibilities for themselves and others, experience their own strengths and talents, foster a sense of community, and remove obstacles that prevent them from understanding and connecting with each other.

Arts United Timeline

In 2017, trustees, staff, and artists began a comprehensive effort to ensure that we create spaces that are diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible for the students we serve. With facilitation by Yancey Consulting, staff spent six days in learning and action planning to undertake an examination of every facet of our work. We developed a 3-year Arts United Action Plan (AU) that was board approved in 2018. Following board approval, the Arts United Action Plan was shared with our teaching artist roster and with the wider YA Network at the Young Audiences National Conference.

To ensure accountability, we established a cross-department staff committee and a board committee. To date, efforts have made meaningful changes in hiring practices, curricula, compensation, learning, language, accessibility, and fundraising. Arts United continues to guide our evolving practice as one of 4 initiatives in YA’s  2025-2029 Strategic Plan.

Commitments of Arts United

Programming

YA’s Board of Trustees, professional teaching artists, and staff share this responsibility and make the following commitments:

• Lifting up the assets of all students, teachers, and family members who participate in our programs, inclusive of all physical, intellectual, and cultural traits.
• Removing barriers that restrict participation in the arts.
• Presenting artists and art forms from diverse and varied cultures and perspectives.
• Supporting anti-bias, anti-stereotype teaching practices that are inclusive of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, socioeconomic status, religion, and any other identifiers.
• Developing and delivering programs that teach empathy, cross-cultural understanding, and acceptance among students.
• Developing authentic programming that disrupts the practice of cultural appropriation and honors the original creators of the art forms we present.

Operations

We are committed to assessment and adjustments of our business practices including budgeting, staffing, staff development, recruitment of teaching artists and consultants, and board development, with the priority to create an equitable and diverse environment in which YA programming is developed.

Leadership

We are committed to sharing our vision and providing leadership in the non-profit sector, the arts education community and the community at-large as we undertake this effort to realize our vision. With the understanding that our path ahead is a shared endeavor, we are committed to ongoing and collaborative learning opportunities for staff, artists, and trustees to continually improve understanding, communication, program quality, and capacity.