10/15/2026
Our new cohort of youth are loving the new photo exploration experience. They are learning to be disciplined, reliable, consistent, developing emotional maturity while freezing frames one youth at a time. We love our workforce efforts and you should too.
Real facts
- A Columbia University study of 335 low-income public school students (ages 9 to 15) found that kids in a photography-based learning program (Photovoice) showed greater gains in STEM-capacity scores than students without it. Photography literally builds the T in STEAM: optics, the exposure triangle, lighting science, editing software.
- In a study of disengaged youth given cameras for a photo curriculum, the more students shared photos with each other, the more they wanted to show up at school in person. The photography pulled them from technical skills into caring about their neighborhoods.
- Research on autophotography with high-risk teens in high-crime, high-poverty areas found more homework completion, fewer fights and detentions, and graduations among participants.
Arts + marginalized youth broadly
- The National Endowment for the Arts found at-risk youth in high-arts programs had higher academic achievement, school engagement, and civic participation than similar-income peers with little arts access.
- Students with arts access are 5x less likely to drop out, 4x more likely to earn academic recognition, and low-income students with arts access are 2x as likely to graduate college.
- One Chicago study found reading scores up ~22% and math up ~19% after visual arts programs were introduced.
- High schoolers with four years of arts score about 100 points higher on the SAT than peers with little arts involvement.
The access gap (our why)
- Nearly 20% of US high schools offer zero arts courses, and the cuts land hardest on lower-income communities. Black and Brown students get less access to quality art instruction, and fine arts are usually the first subjects replaced by test-prep classes.
We are always looking for more partners & sponsors to help grow the results that are already showing!
