Stitching the Threads Together A Cross-Disciplinary Literature Review on Youth Arts Engagement and Well-Being
March 3rd, 2025
New York, NY, United States
JOIE D. ACOSTA, LIA PAK, DEVIN McCARTHY, RHIANNA C. ROGERS, WILLIAM MARCELLINO, MAYA RABINOWITZ, ISABELLE GONZÁLEZ, THEO JACOBS, LEAH DION
This report by the Wallace Foundation outlines key mechanisms for how youth arts engagement can contribute to well-being and identifies opportunities for future research.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA3264-1
Posted bySuzanne Joyal
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Abstract/Description
Promoting the well-being of all youth today can lead to productive, successful, and healthy adults and the health of
society tomorrow. But promoting the well-being of all youth is not simple: It requires a multifaceted set of pathways
and strategies that are still being defined in the research literature. In particular, the literature on how arts engagement promotes child and youth well-being remains fragmented across many disciplinary areas and multidisciplinary
fields. More-efficient and more-frequent synthesis of the literature is needed to illuminate these pathways and strategies across disciplinary areas and multidisciplinary fields to understand and support youth well-being. Recognizing
the critical need to bridge disciplinary and multidisciplinary fields, we aimed to consolidate this dispersed evidence
base by
• briefly summarizing the definitions of youth well-being and the dimensions that contribute to it
• examining how youth arts engagement has been defined and measured in the context of well-being
• identifying mechanisms, unique to and common across well-being dimensions and disciplines, by which various
art forms facilitate youth well-being and how these mechanisms have been measured.
society tomorrow. But promoting the well-being of all youth is not simple: It requires a multifaceted set of pathways
and strategies that are still being defined in the research literature. In particular, the literature on how arts engagement promotes child and youth well-being remains fragmented across many disciplinary areas and multidisciplinary
fields. More-efficient and more-frequent synthesis of the literature is needed to illuminate these pathways and strategies across disciplinary areas and multidisciplinary fields to understand and support youth well-being. Recognizing
the critical need to bridge disciplinary and multidisciplinary fields, we aimed to consolidate this dispersed evidence
base by
• briefly summarizing the definitions of youth well-being and the dimensions that contribute to it
• examining how youth arts engagement has been defined and measured in the context of well-being
• identifying mechanisms, unique to and common across well-being dimensions and disciplines, by which various
art forms facilitate youth well-being and how these mechanisms have been measured.
