Grantees
and Partners

Artistic Noise

Overview:

Artistic Noise creates community with system-impacted youth to enhance their lives through the empowering and therapeutic potential of art making. Based out of their Harlem Studio, participants are encouraged to develop their creative abilities and business skills through arts workshops, arts education, and through exhibiting their work in a variety of youth-led art shows throughout the year.

Youth impacted by the justice system face challenges in nearly every aspect of their lives—from employment to housing to education to mental health. An estimated 90% of system-involved youth—those who were incarcerated in a detention center, long-term secure facility, adult prison, or who are in foster care or other systems—have experienced serious trauma in their lifetimes. This is also true for others who are impacted by the carceral system, including family members of the incarcerated, and those who have been impacted by the juvenile court system, shelter system, probationary system and the mental health care system.

Grant:

Purpose: To support Artistic Noise’s four core New York programs: Art & Entrepreneurship, Art & Care, Alternatives to Incarceration, and the Alumni Artists in Residence program.the Arts, Curatorial and Entrepreneurial Program (A&E) in New York.

In 2025, Artistic Noise ran a full slate of programming across these core initiatives.

• The Art & Entrepreneurship program works to develop the creative abilities of system-impacted young people aged 14-22 years old through an exploration of a variety of hands-on artmaking techniques.
• Art & Care is a youth-centered, weekly drop-in program created in collaboration with the School of Visual Arts. This program culminates in “Community Day” at the end of the year, which invites friends and family to see art, presentation, and to participate in various activities.
• The Alternatives to Incarceration Program is a weekly collaboration with the Midtown Community Justice Center that serves emerging adults and brings therapeutic art programming to the courthouse.
• The Alumni Artists in Residence program provides direct support to Artistic Noise Alumni who are pursuing a career I the visual arts. These programs work together by specifically targeting systems impacted youth of varying ages and across different key points in their maturation (adolescent, emerging adult, etc.). The programs offer ongoing support to Artistic Noise participants and provide multiple touchpoints to address the specific needs of participants at different places in their healing journeys and artistic careers.

Impact:

• Art & Entrepreneurship enrolled young people in workshops where they were paid to work in a studio and earn money from direct artwork sales. Participants can provide for themselves economically and be a part of individual and group-therapy sessions.
• Art & Care had its highest attended season yet and provided expanded services in response to participants’ needs, including more individualized therapy as needed and increased basic-needs support such as food and hygiene products.
• Alternatives To Incarceration, run with the Midtown Community Justice Center, delivered workshops and therapeutic arts programming as a diversion pathway, contributing to case dismissals for hundreds of participants.
• The 2025-26 Alumni Artists in Residence cohort—all former Arts & Entrepreneurship participants—installed large-scale paintings in the Midtown Community Justice Center courthouse, a first for the Center for Justice Innovation, while receiving stipends and dedicated funds for art supplies each, collectively earning thousands of dollars from public art projects and exhibition sales.

Artistic Noise also expanded its presence in the NYC art world through partnerships with Pace Gallery, Olney Gleason, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Met, presenting youth-created work at public exhibitions while continuing to direct 100% of artwork sale proceeds to the artists.