Our Methods
Programs
About Our Programs
Since 2013 ABT has partnered with Los Angeles Unified School District and community centers offering our social-emotional arts-based program. Middle and high school students work with ABT teaching artists, guest instructors, and industry professionals for specialized instruction in the visual and performing arts during their school day and/or after-school.
Our classes meet once to twice a week during the spring and fall semester. Summer programs are also available. All our classes have elements of self-help, resilience-building, and mindfulness meditation.
Our programs, are taught by professional teaching artists and are designed to help build resilience, learn coping emotional tools, and language development, develop critical thinking skills and improve literacy and learning outcomes.
Program List
The Producers Club – Media Creation Program & Internship
Youth Learn technology while expanding creativity by making their own short films. Our students learn to tell their own stories while learning the fundamentals of screenwriting, pre-production, production, and post-production. Other tools learned are storyboarding, camerawork, and editing. Students work closely with local film and television industry professionals to collectively create their original film idea from concept to script and then screen, culminating in an end-of-program mini-film festival for family and friends.
Breaking Barriers – Therapeutic Acting Program (for ages 15yrs to 19 yrs.)
This fun and interactive acting program teach tools to manage anxiety, anger, and depression. This specialized acting class fuses elements of dramatic arts and storytelling together with mindfulness, self-help, and cognitive behavioral therapy to help youth learn how to monitor their thoughts that can result in feelings that can easily become barriers for them. This formula makes learning these crucial life tools engaging and is done in a creative safe space allowing them to express insecurities and repressed feelings. This helps youth identify the obstacles that limit personal growth and empowerment, and provides self-awareness while developing confidence and a new way to look at life’s challenges.
We Got This! - Therapeutic Acting Program (for ages 10yrs to 14yrs)
This is a version of the Breaking Barriers acting program but geared toward younger students.
Breaking Barriers – Career Introduction and Internship
During this program our students of introduced to different professions in the film and television industry. During this hands-on program students learn from invited guests in the industry who visit the classroom. Students also get prepared for a mock interview by participating in a workshop that helps them identify the qualities they already have and embrace them to use during an interview. They are also helped with resume-building. The class culminates into a simulated interview with constructive observations that are worked on after.
Courses & Workshops
Language-Learning Drama
A workshop where Hollywood meets language learning. Our students channel their creativity through language learning. Students learn English and/or Spanish in a safe, non-judgmental creative space by way of our specialized method that makes learning a new language fun and memorable. Popular movie and TV scenes are studied, then scripts are developed to later read and film at end of the class project.
US/MX Transborder Youth Mentor
This is an element of some of our Breaking Barriers programs where Los Angeles students are connected to our young program participants in Tijuana, Mexico through Zoom and video messages, the participants learn about each other while stimulatingly participating in the Breaking Barriers acting program giving them something in common. Participants video message each other during the process and send each other messages of support during challenging times as well as accomplishments. This helps create a transborder camaraderie and awareness.
Script Writing
A workshop where the participants learn the principles of writing scripts to creatively express themselves freely.
OUR LEGACY NOW - Film Production
The participants learn how to discover their own life stories then write, direct, and produce short documentaries showing them that their LEGACY starts NOW, and their journeys are inspiring now. Other topics concerning socially conscience themes for all ages are written from the participants’ perspective.
Create Collective Murals
In this workshop, we promote the beautification of the spaces where today’s youth hang out in everyday life; under the direction and with support of artists and professional visual artists they will creatively express themselves in urban art that is imagined, designed, planned, and executed ultimately contributing to their community and society in general.
Strategies for Creating a Public Image
This is a service that brings in a professional stylist for the entertainment industry to work with young students. The goal is to empower the participants to create their version of their image as successful individuals by projecting an impactful and professional image of themselves. This helps them when it is time for them to go out into the world for meetings with potential jobs and higher education.
Why We Care?
Every young person deserves to live a productive and happy life; Arts For A Better Tomorrow believes that the arts’ resilience-building benefits allow this to become their reality.
Our Methods
Our rich curriculum was developed in a collaborative effort between artists, social scientists, mental health specialists, and university faculty. Our methods provide a reliable educational, therapeutic, and social integration platform for students to acquire both personal and occupational skills.
Students go through a process of emotional healing as they learn skills to better prepare to face the world, thus becoming active, functional, and self-sufficient members of society.
A group of skilled artists, educators, and university student interns from the United States and Mexico help facilitate ABT workshops and programming.
ABT utilizes the arts to prevent and reduce school dropout rates and minimize harmful activities, such as gang violence, prevalent in underprivileged communities. Our dedicated team of instructors provides students with life-skills development, mentoring, and hands-on instruction and activities through visual and performing arts.
Our student participants become actively engaged in self-discovery, learn coping skills, bring down their protective barriers, and develop their potential. They do this through writing, performance, and team-building activities such as producing short films, guided by industry professionals. Also, the participants help to beautify their community by designing and painting murals. The arts provide a positive diversion from destructive behaviors. Students are more likely to improve their grades and become more engaged in healthy activities.
Students are provided a structured curriculum that allows them to see beyond their current circumstances. We help them overcome adversity as they prepare for life as independent young adults and active members of their local community.
ABT student participants visit college campuses, film studios, cultural centers, and other professional settings to contextualize their curriculum. Students also participate in peer mentoring with youth on the other side of the border (Mexico or the United States), interacting through teleconferencing and messaging. This interaction creates international camaraderie, teamwork, and emotional support.
Our Goals and Objectives
- Extend the reach of ABT's social-emotional wellness arts programs: Expand out each to more schools and institutes in Tijuana, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
- Expand university participation: Develop a mentorship program that allows university students in various fields to connect with industry professionals and mentor our program younger students.
- Implement a teacher training program: Train the trainer in our methodology.
- Launch "Our golden mentors" arts program: An film/film acting program that connects youth with local senior citizens at centers.
ABT trauma-informed programs use the arts, combined with resilience-building elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Mindfulness to help address issues that include:
- Anxiety and depression
- Violence prevention (including violence between teen couples)
- Drug abuse prevention
- Self-discovery, acceptance, and expression
- Community transformation
It’s Not Just a Donation. It’s an investment in a child’s future
Your gift today helps Arts for a Better Tomorrow harness the transformational power of the arts to provide young people with life skills, healing tools, academic preparation, and a strategic path toward a healthy, productive, and self-sustaining future.
HEAL
Therapeutic programs for youth in crisis help create safety, love, and belonging in a positive, nurturing environment.
INSPIRE
Arts education for youth moving through a crisis. Redirects youth onto a positive life path by building artistic, creative, and crucial life skills.
EMPOWER
College/Career readiness. Provide tools and resources to launch ABT students into college or trade school. One-on-one mentorship to help guide youth in school until graduation.
ABT programs also include:
- Academic support and tutoring.
- Creative Spanish and English language learning through the arts.
- Educational field trips to college campuses.
- Professional orientation day with professionals.
Connection with higher education
- ABT consults academic experts in various fields
- University volunteers/interns help develop and enrich the ABT program
- University students expand their knowledge and understanding, thus forming a sense of social justice
- University students strengthen their commitment to their community
- University students share their life experiences and provide support
ABT programs also include:
- Academic support and tutoring.
- Creative Spanish and English language learning through the arts.
- Educational field trips to college campuses.
- Professional orientation day with professionals.
Connection with higher education
- ABT consults academic experts in various fields
- University volunteers/interns help develop and enrich the ABT program
- University students expand their knowledge and understanding, thus forming a sense of social justice
- University students strengthen their commitment to their community
- University students share their life experiences and provide support