Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Creative Youth Development (CYD) organizations have been expanding their work to provide greater support to students, families, and communities impacted. They offered mental health resources, food access, housing security, civic engagement support, and academic assistance, among other things alongside digital adaptation of regular program activities. Additionally, many CYD organizations championed youth engagement in various forms of movement building. With CYD initiatives anchored in communities across the United States, young people are innovating, imagining, and creating new pathways toward just futures.

The Lewis Prize for Music released a report about the essential roles CYD music organizations play in their communities, both before and during the pandemic. 280 CYD music organizations contributed alongside the voices of youth leaders and prominent CYD researchers.

Read our report, Midcasting Toward Just Futures: Creative Youth Development's Waymaking to Systems Change Through and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Report content includes:

• Analysis of survey responses received from 280 CYD organizations across the United States. Topics include youth circumstances, leadership demographics and organizational budget as well as the breadth of musical genres taught, direct services offered, partnerships and justice orientation.

• Essays from two youth leaders, Jakayla Furr and Rachel Jackson, doing research to strengthen their programs at Hyde Square Task Force and Saint Louis Story Stitchers Artists Collective, respectively, and also from two CYD outside researchers, Raquel Jimenez and Denise Montgomery.

• Case studies around systems change and direct services at Hyde Square Task Force, David’s Harp Foundation, Neutral Zone, and Zumix.

For presentation inquiries, please contact us: opportunities@thelewisprize.org