Mission & Values

Our Mission

ArtWell creates supportive spaces for Philadelphia youth to engage in artmaking as a pathway to self-expression and wellness.

Our Vision

We envision a Philadelphia where schools and neighborhoods nurture creativity and integrate the arts as an essential means of learning, community-building, and personal growth.

CORE VALUES & PRACTICES

Imagination

We believe the arts are an essential means for discovering our dreams, making sense of our realities, sparking creative thinking and problem solving, and re-imagining what is possible for the future we want to live in.

We facilitate the creation of a structure and process that invites and nurtures diverse and emergent perspectives, courageous creativity, wonder, collaboration, and bold risk-taking.

Healing

We are committed to creative and self-reflective processes as powerful and effective ways to move through loss and trauma, to access safety, connection, and sanctuary, to express ourselves, and to thrive as learners and in life.

We practice trauma-responsive strategies and focus on the process of art-making and sharing to build safety and support connection, reflection, and healing.

Social Justice

We believe access to arts and education is a human right. Knowledge and creation have the power to disrupt injustices and catalyze social change by affirming identities, expressing our truths, and promoting equity, belonging, understanding.

We see ongoing education, conversation, and personal transformation as crucial components to changing oppressive systems and institutions. We invest in our continuous growth and learning, and in intentional partnerships with others who work to affect change and dismantle systems of oppression that impact our young people and their communities. We aim to uplift and support the development of visionary leaders across all ages.

Spirituality

All people and communities are inherently valuable and contain an abundance of spiritual and creative resources within, between, and beyond them. We value the power of inquiry, ritual, and celebration. We appreciate mystery, awe, and beauty as integral to what it means to be human.

We help people connect with their deepest sources of inspiration through art making and reflection. We encourage asking big questions about purpose and meaning. We foster relationships with diverse faith-based and cultural groups, and make room for difference as well as universal experiences.

Community

We know that every community has a deep well of creativity, culture, and strengths, and that we can only overcome the complex challenges of our time through strong partnership, shared visioning, and distributed leadership.

We aim to galvanize the creativity and strength within groups, to listen and support healing, celebration, bridge-building, and creative problem solving with our partners, students, teaching artists, and staff. We hope to create room for all voices and leaders. We strive to create a culture with space for play, joy, collaboration, openness, and reflection.

Love

Love is our bottom line. We are motivated by the reverence, care, and honor we feel for the youth we serve and communities with whom we partner. Our work is anchored in our love and commitment to our city and world.

We cultivate understanding, compassion, interdependence, and joy in all of our relationships.