Utilizing the creative arts and participatory research methods to explore the dynamics of community violence with urban youth

Understanding and preventing youth violence remains a high priority issue for all communities. Working together with young people to explore the dynamics of risk and protective factors is essential to developing culturally relevant and effective intervention and prevention efforts. This paper describes the utilization of an innovative participatory art-based approach called Visual Voices, to collaborating with young people and communities to understand and address the issue of community safety. This approach has four integrated mediums of expression: painting; drawing; writing; and photography that are collaged to create an exhibition common public exhibition as well as data collection. Central to this approach is the utilization of guided group critiques of the created works designed to acknowledge the unique and creative efforts in addition to more deeply exploring images and content expressed by participants. Working collaborative with youth between the ages of 8 and 14 identified from a local community-based organization in Baltimore City, this presentation reports the findings from a project focused on the topic of community safety. Young people participated in four two-hour creative project sessions and facilitated group discussions to explore created works. With permission, focus group discussions designed to assess the project characteristics and content were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using qualitative thematic data analysis. This interactive presentation will explore the lessons learned with utilizing the creative arts to working with young people in addition to presenting key findings of risk and protective factors for urban youth violence.