transcenDANCE Youth Arts Project
transcenDANCE is a nationally-recognized creative youth development organization that works with teens in underserved San Diego communities. Our programs change the trajectory of students’ lives by building resilience, confidence, and creativity and by instilling life-changing skills such as leadership, collaboration, and community engagement.
CREATE & CONNECT Virtual
We have created new ways to connect through art in times of physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through virtual classes, rehearsals, and one-on-one therapy sessions we are creating material for our 2020 CREATE Performing Group performance, Home within a Home, a transparent look at our experiences during this unprecedented time.
In addition, alumni of the CREATE Performing Group are creating material for a new film series Portraits of Space. Portraits of Home.
transcenDANCE Stands for Justice
We acknowledge and affirm that transcenDANCE has an important role to play in the dismantling of white supremacy and institutional racism. A key component of our work is social justice. We work with youth and young people from multiple identities to expand and nurture their analytic sensibilities, creativity, self-reflection, and critical thinking skills to engage them in the work of fighting for visibility, inclusion, and intersectional justice. We promote and supporting youth culture as a mechanism to drive youths’ understanding of and ability to challenge racial violence, and structural and systemic oppression.
JANUARY – MAY 2020 Highlights
Our core after-school program, the CREATE Performance Group was invited to join Grammy-winner Jason Mraz in a new musical adventure!
CREATE is now year-round and features both Middle and High School cohorts.
Programs go virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic.
IMPACT
transcenDANCE measures our impact using the PEAR (Program in Education, After School, and Resiliency) assessment tools developed at Harvard to monitor student progress and success. This quantitative data validates the work that transcenDANCE is doing to keep youth in school and help them pursue college, seek leadership positions, and pursue careers. Learn more about our measured impact.