Safe Space Programs

Child Abuse Prevention
Adolescent Services
Residences
Health and Mental Health Services
School/Community Collaborations
Creative and Performing Arts

Creative expression and therapeutic arts play a vital role in Safe Space`s services. It is certain that creative and visual arts are extremely effective in engaging and retaining high-risk and hard-to-reach youth, and that the positive impact on program participants is striking. Using fine arts, drama, music, dance, film and poetry, our therapeutic art specialists begin to unravel the mystery of the past, create trust and build relationships leading to solving problems and creating positive futures. In addition to the many art therapy programs present in our school and community mental health efforts, Safe Space runs two very popular programs for our teens.

Arts Academy
Safe Space`s Arts Academy serves as the culmination of our various, neighborhood-based, creative arts projects and provides after-school workshops and classes for our teenagers interested in dance, music, drama, and other forms of expression. Our Academy offers young emerging artists unique production and collaboration opportunities and helps them develop an appreciation for the arts through in-depth exposure. The Academy offers opportunities in performance in, and production of, theater, a dance troupe, and a choir. Projects and rehearsals take place at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio in Manhattan, the First Reform Church in Jamaica, Queens, and our Youth Drop In Center. Experienced instructors, artists, and other professionals in the field help kids realize their potential and share real life experiences with our youth. Coming soon, Safe Space is adding opportunities for video, photography, poetry, storytelling, and fine and digital arts. Safe Space knows that for many hard-to-reach youth, the arts are a most effective way to facilitate communication, expression and treatment.

Safe Space Players
A group of teens yell at a young couple on stage. They have just heard the man tell his girlfriend that he will not get tested for HIV. The audience shouts at him for not getting tested and tell her that she deserves more respect. The teens are visibly angry. They have forgotten that they are in school, and that the interaction between the couple is a performance by the Safe Space Players. This scenario is real to the teens. The issue is one all too familiar.

The Safe Space Players are a group of teenagers who write and perform skits focusing on issues that affect teens. They use performing arts as a vehicle to engage youth living in at-risk communities in peer education, training and prevention efforts. Through improvisation, scripted scenes and role-playing, as well as other art forms such as rap, dance and poetry, the teenage cast members encourage their peers to discuss the struggles they face related to peer pressure, teen pregnancy, violence, family dynamics, health and HIV, alcohol and drugs, prejudices, and sexuality. They visit schools, churches, community centers, after-school programs, street fairs and other places where youth congregate. Their primary target audience is young people, ages 15-20, although annually the Safe Space Players perform for thousands of people, young and old, at venues across the city -- in 2002 alone, the Safe Space Players reached almost 4,000 community residents.

"When they come up to me, especially the young kids, they say, `I love the way you act. You made it seem so real. You weren`t fake and you kept it real with everybody and we knew just what you were talking about. We learned different things from what you said.` It makes me feel good, that they were really listening and learning. The information wasn`t just going in one ear and out the other."
-Safe Space Player

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