For the last 22 years, Free Arts has partnered with Dance Theater West (DTW) to create DTW’s Storybook Ballet production featuring Free Arts children and teens. Our beloved partnership continued into September 2023, when twelve Free Arts children performed alongside DTW dancers at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

Hello, friends! Vice President of Programs, Matt Sandoval, here. I wanted to share an update on the progress of the Canvas of the Heart podcast for Free Arts. I’m happy to report that we have successfully completed the podcast’s first season! Throughout the summer, we were able to feature a diverse group of guests who...

Free Arts Camp Series 2023 kicked off June 5th, beginning with Theater Camp, and was concluded with two Multicultural Arts Camps: MAC 1 and MAC 2.

It’s been a little over a year since Phonetic Spit, a unique Valley nonprofit with similar goals and values to Free Arts, partnered with us to form Mic Check, a monthly teen and young adult open mic event held at Parsons Place every third Saturday of the month.

As springtime has us warming back up here in Arizona, Free Arts decided it was a great time to rekindle our long-time partnership with the Desert Botanical Garden and bring the children we serve a Free Arts Day!

Participating families in our new program. We all start somewhere to build resilience. With this new program, it aims to connect families with a supportive community. 2022 was a year of growth and opportunities of expansion for our programs. One of the opportunities has been the creation of the Foster and Kinship Family Program. This...

Our Weekly Mentor Program this past summer created masks at one of our participating partner child welfare agencies. The Weekly Mentor Program is making a comeback in a strong way! Over the past fiscal year, children and their mentors created everything art-related. From DIY board games and their ideal villages to colorful masks and detailed...

Free Arts made a positive impact locally in our recent partnership with Miss Scottsdale Outstanding Teen. Sophia Lin reached out to Free Arts because she related to our mission: “Transforming children’s trauma to resilience through the arts.”

This year Free Arts has teamed up with Phonetic Spit, a local non-profit whose mission is to create brave spaces that help young people find, develop, and publicly present their voices as agents of social change.

With the arrival of COVID, words like “unprecedented” and “pivoting” and “lock down” became common language to all of us.  Free Arts was no exception.