Our Programs

StART Dreaming is a FREE year-long arts education and college readiness program. It immerses 15 - 20 rising high school seniors in arts education that they do not have access to and helps them get into college. After a four-week summer arts intensive, the program tracks students through their senior year of high school. We offer them ongoing access to artistic and cultural activities.

StART Dreaming also provides the support they need to apply for college by pairing each participant with an individual mentor who helps them complete and submit their college applications, FAFSA, and financial aid forms.

StART Dreaming has maintained a 100% success rate in college admissions for all of its high school graduates, and most students receive substantial scholarships.

Description goes here StART Design Lab & Studio (SDL) is the newest addition to our programming. Launched in 2020, it provides StART Dreaming alumni with continued educational and professional opportunities intended to bridge the gap between college education and professional work experience.

To date, SDL has been able to offer a total of11 different types of classes with 4-6 sessionsin each including songwriting, singing, acting, photography, financial literacy, goal-setting and achievement, and audition technique.

StART Young is a FREE summer performing arts program. It consists of two 3-week sessions, one for grades 3-6 and one for grades 7-11. The program is limited to 25 students.

Each session culminates in a final performance, written and created by the students, that is FREE and open to the public. Many StART Young graduates go on to participate in our StART Dreaming College Readiness Program.

In 2018, Statement Arts began to think critically about how it could reach more young people from historically under-represented communities throughout New York City.

StART Access programming is FREE and consists of artistic masterclasses, cultural opportunities, and life skills-building activities.

Our founding project, Urban Arts was a volunteer effort that filled the immediate needs of the music program at the High School of Environmental Studies (HSES), a Title 1 public school in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen.

Our priorities included:

• Bringing in professional New York City choreographers, actors, directors, casting agents, pianists, costumers and photographers to work with the students as teaching artists.

• Provided workshops, photo sessions, master classes, and rehearsals.

• Six full scale musicals were produced at HSES including - A Chorus Line, Bye Bye Birdie, Little Shop of Horrors, Pippin, The Wiz, and Annie.

• Our students performed in national music festivals in Virginia, Washington D.C., and Maryland.

Statement Arts took 16 professional performers from New York City by bus to perform in the areas of the Gulf Coast that had been ravaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Our World Art project invited local choirs, musicians and singers to join us while we brought music, holiday spirit, toys, and supplies to those desperately in need. Partnering with grassroots aid groups, we performed all over the Gulf Coast including Slidell Louisiana, and Waveland, Kiln, and Bay Saint Louis Mississippi, which were demolished by the eye of Katrina.

We sang in tents, feeding stations, churches, libraries and a FEMA distribution center. The tour concluded with a memorable concert in New Orleans' French Quarter.

You can read about our trip here.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Statement Arts joined THE CULTURE PROJECT's IMPACT Festival* by working with an alliance of arts organizations to create IMPACT on the GULF.

IMPACT on the GULF showcased dynamic artistic endeavors that testified to the despair and hope that co-existed in the region affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Exhibits included theatrical performances, panel discussions, film screenings, jazz nights, readings and fundraisers.

*IMPACT was a human rights festival organized by the Culture Project, and hosted on 42nd Street by chashama, from September 28th through October 7th, 2006.

A Single Drop of Water was an international photography competition with submissions from more than 2,000 artists from 53 countries produced by Statement Arts.

Photographic categories included; A Single Drop of Water, Water in Our Daily Lives, Water Scapes, and Clean Water Initiatives. There was also a People's Choice category and a Youth/Under 25 category.

Finalists won cash prizes totaling $5,000 and the winners of our People's Choice and Youth/Under 25 categories were awarded new cameras.