Expression.Connection.Transformation.
Art from Ashes (AfA) is a Colorado nonprofit that encourages creative empowerment through artistic expression for struggling youth age 9 to 24.
Help Us Grow
There are multiple ways to support our efforts, whether through donations, corporate sponsorships, joining the Dylan Thomas Society, volunteering, networking, or attending our youth performances.
Give online to fund creative workshops for young people.
Volunteer
Share your time and skills with an AfA volunteer team.
Come to a youth performance
First Friday performances and Third Thursday writing workshops, in person and online. See upcoming events
Bring AfA to your young people
For youth-serving agencies and schools that want to host a workshop. Contact the Director of Programs
20,000Young People Served
240Community Collaborators
AfA has partnered with 240 youth-serving agencies and schools to provide interactive programs that offer a healthy alternative to destructive behaviors for young people struggling with abuse and violence, poverty, racism, depression, and low personal resiliency.
Empowering youth through creative expression and personal transformation
Our nationally-recognized, award-winning curriculum has served more than 20,000 young people in Art from Ashes creative empowerment workshops.
For more than 22 years, AfA’s art programs have encouraged marginalized youth to tell their stories and find creative empowerment through poetry and spoken word in our award-winning Phoenix Rising program. In 2017 AfA added the visual and tactile art program Drawing on Air.
All of AfA’s programs provide a safe, non-judgmental space with caring adults and community artists for youth to share their dreams, hopes, fears and pain, as well as the opportunity to connect with their community, and transform their stories from trauma to self-empowerment.
Young people in challenging circumstances learn the power of their own creativity to reframe negative perceptions and determine a successful future.
Our work is changing the world by listening to, connecting with, and supporting transformation for thousands of young people a year.
Our programs
Phoenix Rising
Poetry and spoken word. Our award-winning flagship program.
Drawing on Air
Visual and tactile art, added in 2017.
Adult Workshops
Creative workshops for adults.
Your donation of money, time and services means the world.
When the young people in our society know we care and that we’re listening, we all benefit: fewer court costs and prisons (with much better results); less crime; fewer teen pregnancies; less poverty; less cyclical domestic and child abuse; increased literacy; improved mental health—the benefits of restoring hope to a struggling young person are innumerable.
Support our work and see how far your investment can go in a young person’s life.
