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What happens when a teaching artist ends their studies unprepared? How do theater teaching artists navigate unpreparedness in their work? Using three personal vignettes, we explore reflexivity toward our own unrehearsed moments and contextualize our experiences within teaching artist preparation literature. From learning how to 'show up' as a teaching artist, to navigating school policies around 'deserving' participation, to reaching the bounds of their therapeutic training as non-clinicians, we re-encounter moments for which we were unprepared, despite extensive preparation and education. Ultimately, we suggest key questions that teaching artists can reflect upon in such moments, in the hopes of building more reflexive practices, programs, and policies in the field of teaching artistry.

The arts have been a presence in prisons for over a century; these programs have varied aims, from educational and skill development to social-emotional learning to reentry preparation. Despite the popularity of arts programs across the prison landscape, relatively few researchers have empirically studied the outcomes of participating in arts programs for incarcerated participants. This scoping review systematically reviews 25 studies, mostly from the United States, which report the various outcomes associated with prison arts programs. The outcome areas reported on, from most to least prevalent in this review, include social-emotional outcomes, educational and vocational outcomes, disciplinary outcomes, and community and policy outcomes. Based on the research included in this scoping review, there is relatively strong support that participating in prison arts programs is linked to a constellation of social-emotional outcomes. While several studies used posttest-only designs or had small sample sizes, studies that used validated scales to measure social-emotional outcomes found statistically significant improvements in self-confidence, self-esteem, task completion, social competence, emotional stability and control and wellbeing, and decreased hopelessness and anger. There is sparser, yet still promising, evidence that participating in prison arts programming is linked to educational, vocational, disciplinary, community, and policy outcomes. Further empirical research in all outcomes areas is needed to better understand how incarcerated individuals, their families and communities, and prisons at large can most benefit from arts programming. Future research will benefit from intentional partnerships between researchers, incarcerated individuals, arts practitioners, and prison administrators in identifying desired outcomes and charting spheres of impact.

Young adults who have endured chronic housing instability have often been failed by settings which have inadequately supported them – such as home and school settings. As such, young people experiencing homelessness and housing instability are seeking supportive settings. Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is a burgeoning supportive intervention in the youth homelessness services landscape. Our study used the geographic interview methodology, a novel qualitative geographic information systems methodology, to understand how young adult residents (N = 15) in PSH experience the physical setting. Residents experienced the common spaces in PSH as contested spaces; meanwhile, they sought choice-centered spaces – where there are choices of what to do, who to spend time with, and how to spend time. PSH settings for young adults may embrace choice-centered principles and practices when building trauma-informed PSH for young adults. Future research should explore these findings across demographic and geographic differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third places—public and community settings like parks and libraries—are theorized to serve as sources of social connection, community, and play. Yet, young people who hold marginalized identities, such as those experiencing homelessness and housing instability, often endure discrimination in third place settings. This study used game‐based inquiry to partner with recently housed young people who have experienced chronic housing instability (N = 21) to understand how they would (re)imagine future third places. We then analyzed transcripts from these game sessions through qualitative thematic analysis. Participants suggested that certain tenets must be present in third places: they must offer opportunities for agency and individualization; they must meet everyday needs; and they must be explicitly inclusive. To actualize these tenets, participants imagined places that meet many needs and do many things; portable and adaptable physical spaces; freedom to choose how to play; attending to and subverting oppressive social hierarchies; providing choice for privacy or connection; knowing people will be around; and free amenities. These findings have implications for theoretical development, practices in present and future third places, and methodological development of games in research. Highlights: Young people who hold marginalized identities often endure discrimination in third place settings.Game‐based inquiry is a novel way to engage young people in reimagining future third places.Reimagined third places promote agency, meet everyday needs, and are explicitly inclusive.These findings challenge prior theoretical work on third places when considering youth.Current and future third places may embrace these tenets to build inclusive third places for youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not often implemented with emerging adults (18 – 25 years), permanent supportive housing (PSH) is an intervention which aims to support transitions from chronic housing insecurity. Ontological security theory (OST) -- a sense of being whole and alive on a continuous spectrum – serves as a lens to understand this transition. Through longitudinal surveys using semi-structured interview questions, emerging adults living in PSH (N = 28) in western Colorado described their relationship to the concept of 'home' through an OST lens. We found that time in one place as well as emerging adults being able to ponder 'what's next' served as key elements to defining home as well as trust in other residents and staff, consistent policies, a positive sense of safety, and control also impacted residents' experiences. These findings offer insight into how PSH service providers may support residents and promote OST during unique developmental phases of emerging adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restorative justice practices such as victim-offender dialogue (VOD) have gained traction in the past few decades as routes towards healing amidst high incarceration and recidivism rates and growing public dissatisfaction with punitive carceral structures. However, little work has sought to understand the nuanced experiences of those who engage in VOD processes, in their own words. In this manuscript, we use narrative analytic methods to explore how a dyad involved in VOD process—the individual who engaged in a crime, and a mother and daughter impacted by this crime—transformed over the course of the process (before, 2 weeks after, and 6 months after the dialogue). We found that, for the participating dyad, engaging in the VOD process cracked open the humanity of the other through the vehicles of religion and forgiveness. Our findings echo—and expand—prior work on "forgiveness" in RJ processes, and suggest the need for future research which explores the nuanced role of religion in VOD. Finally, we advocate for the expansion of facilitated dialogue processes as a process with the potential to catalyze individual and community healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social workers engage across sectors to advocate for social justice, empower individuals and communities and work toward more equitable futures. Foresight practice, or the systematic scan of past and future possibilities to analyze complex problems and situations, offers social work mechanisms for sensemaking and impact that is presently missing from the field. In this article we offer four examples of using foresight strategies and tools in the social work classroom. We illustrate how foresight can benefit and enhance social workers’ values and competencies, as well as invite our educator colleagues to adapt these strategies for their own. The article concludes with recommendations for further exploration for social work educators who would like to employ foresight tools in their classrooms (and beyond). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mutual aid organizing is a social movement practice long sustained by queer/trans people, immigrants, people of color, and disability communities, among other communities pushed to the margins of society, with the emergence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, and subsequent government failures in addressing unmet needs, mutual aid proliferated into new (and more socially privileged) communities in the United States and across the world. Amidst this landscape of extraordinary and unique crises, our study sought to understand the benefits experienced by those engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the state of Colorado, United States. Our team conducted semistructured individual interviews with 25 individuals participating in mutual aid through groups organized on social media or through intentional communities. We found that participants, who engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, built empathy, a sense of nonjudgement, and critical consciousness as they created common ground as humans. Participants also found mutual aid engagement to provide nourishing support, to hold pain among more people, and, simply to "feel good." We discuss the potential implications of these benefits for sustaining mutual aid movements through the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States and beyond. Key Points/Highlights: Mutual aid organizers during COVID‐19 experienced benefits to individual and collective well‐being.Mutual aid built a sense of empathy, nonjudgement, and critical consciousness among participants.Mutual aid provided nourishing support, an ability to hold pain among more people, and "felt good."Horizontal interdependent care models have benefits as we face complex crises of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A broad body of research suggests that interactions with the police can have a negative impact on emotional and behavioral outcomes among youth. Therefore, developing interventions that simultaneously reduce youth involvement in criminalized activities and promote positive outcomes for youth are foundational to creating a just society. The present study examines the emotional and behavioral impact that police contact, community and extracurricular activities, and collective efficacy have on youth. Our findings suggest that participation in community and extracurricular activities is associated with positive youth outcomes. Of the two components of collective efficacy, social cohesion had a strong association with emotional and behavioral outcomes whereas informal social control did not. Our findings emphasize the importance of community engagement and community involvement when developing community-level interventions that simultaneously address participation in criminalized behaviors and promote positive emotional and behavioral outcomes for youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, six social work scholars at varying career stages and institutions used collaborative autoethnography to identify (1) structural constraints and tensions to engage in participatory action research (PAR) in the academy, (2) the strategies we have used to navigate this work, and (3) suggestions for structural changes necessary to meaningfully value this work in the academy. Key structural constraints and tensions center around questioning the legitimacy of this work, time necessary to do this work, challenges funding this work, and inherent ableism in the academy. We share case examples of strategies PAR scholars have used to navigate or subvert academic expectations, including operationalizing values, rooting in movements, uplifting accessibility and knowledge; holding accountability to community, and articulating commitments. We end with recommendations for social work institutions and funders to meaningfully elevate, support, and fund PAR work in the academy. Specifically, we see the need for social work institutions to elevate PAR training and reward systems as legitimate knowledge, build support systems for conducting PAR in the academy, revise evaluation of scholars at milestones to value PAR; funders should also work to align funding opportunities and practices with participatory praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited research has explored whether young adults that experience homelessness and housing instability (YAEH) self-identify as homeless. This study uses the Homeless Youth Risk and Resilience Survey (HYRRS) dataset, a seven-city sample of 1426 YAEH, to examine the relationship between the type of place a young adult stayed the night before their interview and whether they self-identified as homeless. While all participants were classified as homeless as aligned with the McKinny-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, about one third (30.66%) did not self-identify as homeless. Logistic regression analyses revealed a statistically significant relationship between the type of place stayed and self-identification as homeless; participants who slept outside the night before the interview were most likely to identify as homeless, followed by participants who stayed in shelters/institutions, then participants who couch surfed. Participants who had spent more total time unstably housed were more likely to identify as homeless, as were participants who identified as cisgender women. Findings from this study may be used to inform outreach and engagement practices among service providers, who may consider building partnerships across service sectors so unstably housed young people may access housing support without self-identifying as homeless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prisons are physically separated from society. As a result, the public has little contact with incarcerated people, and few avenues for understanding their lived experiences. Our evaluation draws upon construal level theory – the idea that the more concrete something becomes, the more psychological proximity we perceive – to consider whether attending a virtual prison arts event may foster psychological proximity to incarcerated individuals and issues of incarceration among the general public. Further, we consider whether increased psychological proximity is associated with shifts in attitudes towards, and intentions to act regarding, issues of incarceration. We found that attendees (N = 142) who had been inside prisons previously had higher levels of psychological proximity at pretest. All attendees demonstrated significant increases in psychological proximity between pretest and posttest; attendees who had not visited prisons previously experienced greater changes. Increases in psychological proximity were predictive of changes in attitudes and intended behaviors. Our findings foreground the need for research which explores what kinds of events, and for whom, these effects are most impactful. Lastly, we suggest that policymakers and practitioners consider virtual gatherings and arts events as a cost-effective, yet meaningful, way to bridge the gap between incarcerated people and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: While social work as a field predicates itself upon a person-in-environment approach, limited work has explored the nuanced relationship between a person and their environment. Exploring place, which can briefly be described as "meaningful location," is one means of looking at the person-in-environment paradigm. This conceptual article builds upon Oldenberg and Brisset's sociological theory of Third Places (which conceptualizes non-home/non-work places that provide a particular sense of well-being and belonging for participants) to consider an alternative theory of "collapsed places," which recognizes the ways in which socially marginalized communities uniquely build meaning within their respective place contexts. Findings: In a traditional first, second, and third places, Oldenburg and Brissett imagine that individuals can move freely throughout and between all three spaces. However, individuals whose lives are constrained for any number of reasons do not have this same freedom. Their places are thus "collapsed"—perhaps geographically so, or perhaps their mobility limitations constrain free movement. This article includes case examples from three "collapsed place" contexts—older adults, incarcerated communities, and individuals experiencing homelessness or housing instability. Applications: Little has been done to operationalize social work theories of place towards practice. This article offers implications for social workers to better support clients and communities in operationalizing place-based social work research and practice. Considering how individuals and groups make meaning in "collapsed place" contexts can serve as a tool for social workers to engage with socially marginalized groups at micro, meso and macro levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many young people who experience social marginalization (such as young people of color, who identify as LGBTQ, and who have experienced housing instability, among others) have often faced significant trauma exposure and social oppression and may endure subsequent adverse impacts on their well-being. Conversely, many such young people exhibit adaptive responding-the ability to maintain well-being through and despite such contextual constraints. This theoretical paper illustrates a conceptual model for how third places-public settings which offer sociability and community connection-may foster adaptive responding through the mutually constitutive (i.e., mutually reinforcing and interrelated) mechanisms of psychological sense of community and social capital. As prior work on third places has not considered the social marginalization which many young people face, especially in public settings, this theoretical model also considers how social policing in third places potentially moderates the mutually constitutive relationships between participation in third places, social capital, and psychological sense of community. This paper ends with a proposed research agenda, which may empirically test this theoretical model and its assumptions through future model development. Lastly, key considerations for policy and practice are offered, with particular attention to how young people may be affirmed and welcomed in third places rather than socially policed., (© 2021 Society for Community Research and Action.)