A Creative Wellbeing Experience at Alliance High School
This week marked the beginning of our first Creative Wellbeing classes at Alliance High School in Los Angeles—a 13-week journey designed to nurture connection, expression, and belonging through art and conversation.
The program is part of Connected Roots, a Creative Wellbeing initiative exploring how creativity can strengthen relationships and build community resilience. Each week, one artist and one social worker co-facilitate sessions that bring art, mindfulness, and care into dialogue.
In collaboration with Project Fatherhood, our model includes three interconnected groups: a siblings class, a mothers class, and a fathers class. Each Monday, participants gather to share stories, make art, and engage in reflection. The evening ends with a shared family dinner, creating a warm and communal space where connection continues beyond the classroom.
This Week’s Focus: Identity
Our first art experience focused on identity—beginning with something as personal and universal as writing our names. Participants explored their names as symbols of self: their rhythm, shape, meaning, and history.
Some names were drawn with bold color, others in quiet pencil lines. Each name carried its own story—of family, heritage, growth, and possibility. Together, we reflected on how identity evolves and how art allows us to express the parts of ourselves that words can’t always reach.
About Creative Wellbeing
Creative Wellbeing is a strategic collaboration that grew out of conversations about how to bring more healing into our systems—and how to shift culture by nurturing wellbeing through art.
It is a partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Office of Child Protection, Department of Mental Health, Department of Children and Family Services, Department of Justice, Care and Opportunities, and the Arts for Healing and Justice Network, as part of the LA County Arts Education Collective. Together, these organizations are advancing the goals of Arts for All Children, Youth, & Families: Los Angeles County’s Regional Blueprint for Arts Education.
Upward Together is honored to contribute to this vision—bringing art as a language of healing and connection into school and family settings.
Looking Ahead
Over the next 13 weeks, we’ll continue exploring themes of identity, connection, and resilience through color, storytelling, and mindful art-making. Each session invites families to pause, express, and reconnect—with themselves and one another.
At Upward Together, we believe creativity can transform how we relate, communicate, and care. Through partnerships like Creative Wellbeing and Project Fatherhood, we’re planting seeds of calm and connection that grow far beyond the classroom—one Monday, one conversation, one shared meal at a time.
