ARTS ANGLE VANTAGE nurtures citizenship and builds an equitable and creative community by giving youth from diverse backgrounds access to the arts and by empowering them to use their voices to create public service journalism that delivers local news and views on arts and culture.

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WE EMERGED TO ADDRESS:
• increased interest in arts and creativity among young people,
• precipitous decline in arts education,
• continued inequities in access to the arts and media by marginalized populations,
• and decreased arts coverage, which has suffered as the journalism industry faced setbacks with the rise of global technology.

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YOUTH-FOCUSED
Our work to elevate the voices of young people helps youth better understand themselves, others, and the world around them. These voices, represented by a diversity of participants, are central to our teen-centered journalism platform and program — Arts Angle Vantage, a program of Arts Journalism Trust, Incorporated. This collaborative work fosters greater community-wide awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the local arts landscape.

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When teens participate in Arts Angle Vantage and connect with the community’s arts, they become better writers and strengthen their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. They become better prepared for higher education and careers in the 21st century, including those in the media, and the arts. As Arts Angle Vantage improves their media literacy, they become better citizens of a world shaped by digital technology.

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Our work offers free workshops to youth that empower them to create arts journalism and engage with the arts, artists, and the greater community about the issues that shape us. Participants get opportunities to attend arts events, meet and talk with artists and arts leaders, learn about writing about the arts and creativity as well as the process and other finer points of reporting and writing, and producing original content for the Arts Angle Vantage digital platforms and other media in the region. (The organization values sharing its content with media partners to give youth a wider voice. Partners have included LEO Weekly and the Courier Journal.) 

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FOR COMMUNITY
Our platform and programming prioritize engaging the wider community and members across society — youth, educators, artists, cultural organizations, civil servants — in conversations about our coverage and issues that concern the local creative life.

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OUR VALUES
Fairness and integrity guide Arts Journalism Trust’s production of high-quality news and information about the arts. Truth, accuracy, and inclusion are fundamental to our beliefs. Essential to our mission is our conviction that strong journalism — and specifically arts journalism — strengthens democracy.

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OUR HISTORY
From 2018 to 2021, we invested in young people via our pilot project, Arts Bureau Edge, with nine workshops supervised by media professionals benefiting more than 25 teens. Their articles about the arts were published on our website and in local media outlets. Some 45% of participants identified as BIPOC and LBGTQ. In a survey, 70% said they would recommend the program and said it helped them in school.

 

One wrote, “I had a great experience meeting others from around the region who were interested in similar things. I also enjoyed writing a piece on a subject that I felt was important and mattered.”

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DONATIONS TAX-DEDUCTABLE

In 2022, we increased our workshop offerings after the pandemic had slowed our work. The same year, the Internal Revenue Service designated our parent organization, Arts Journalism Trust, a public charity. As a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, your donation is tax-deductible. Arts Journalsm Trust, Incorporated's EIN# is 86-1349907
 

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​PHOTO: The cast of "We've Come to Believe," part of Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2019 Humana Festival of New American Plays. Photo by Jonathan Roberts.