ABSTRACT
The Summer Arts Workshop (SAW) has been offered through the Helen B. Landgarten Art Therapy Clinic at Loyola Marymount University to promote social justice within the context of a holistic educational approach. The workshop focuses on helping participants explore and identify who they are and how they want to be in the world. We implemented our newly adapted virtual SAW to 16 middle school students from Dolores Mission School, our partner school that serves a primarily Latinx population in a marginalized area of Los Angeles. We also delivered a virtual SAW to a juvenile hall high school in a state youth detention centre, which included further changes to the program due to restrictions set by the probation department. In both cases, student and staff testimonials show that students have benefited from the positive youth development approach that we implemented. The youth were able to show vulnerability and, at the same time, were valued for showing it, which increased the strength of their voice.
