Healing Centered Practices

Healing Centered Engagement

We are excited to engage in a multi-year exploration of arts-based healing-centered engagement, as we recognize its promise for creating equity in youth and community outcomes across LA County.

This project of the LA County Arts Education Collective has been developed by the Flourish Agenda in partnership with the LA County Department of Arts and Culture (Arts and Culture). Flourish Agenda is an organization founded by nationally-recognized researcher-practitioner, Dr. Shawn Ginwright, that provides tools and strategies to help young people of color thrive. Dr. Ginwright and Nedra Ginwright developed the Healing Centered Engagement model, based on decades of healing-centered work with Black youth and families in Akili Camps in the Bay Area.

Arts and Culture is inspired to connect that body of wisdom with the rich wisdom of our partners across LA County—from teachers and school administrators, to youth organizers and advocates, to mental health practitioners, to community-based teaching artists and culture-bearers, and beyond.

Together, we will evolve a shared language around healing-centered practices, develop a shared framework for arts-based healing-centered engagement, and look at how arts are beautifully positioned to support the creation of healing-centered environments.

Healing Centered Engagement (HCE) Foundations Series

From February through July 2022, Flourish Agenda’s team, all of whom have deep experience in creating healing-centered environments for youth, facilitated a series of five Healing Centered Engagement Foundations workshops. These workshops, all free and open to the public, helped us understand the Healing Centered Engagement framework, think about applications to the work we do, and illuminate how arts and culture can support the creation and sustaining of healing-centered environments. Participants may attend one or all sessions, with each unpacking a different aspect of the HCE model.

If you missed any of the HCE Foundations sessions, or if you attended but would like to revisit the content, you can access recordings and slide decks of all five sessions.

Arts-Based HCE Working Group

From May through November 2022, a smaller cohort of arts practitioners is engaging in a deep conversation and learning exchange to help develop an arts-based healing centered engagement framework that supports a shared language and community of practice, and also honors unique culturally- and community-specific approaches. 

Resources

As Arts and Culture continues learning from and engaging with the field around healing-centered practices, we will share resources on our Resources for Healing Centered Practices page. There’s some good stuff there!

Resources for Healing Centered Practices

As Arts and Culture continues learning from and engaging with the field around healing-centered practices, we will share resources.