Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network

As Los Angeles County leaders continue to reimagine the county’s juvenile justice system, they’re now looking to see if they can leverage the arts to help achieve reform goals. With a $750,000 one-year grant from the Ford Foundation’s Arts Justice Fund (AJF), the county Arts Commission will launch the Arts and Youth Development Project, which is designed to serve youth and families involved — or at risk of involvement — with the juvenile justice system.

Within the freshly painted walls of Los Angeles County’s newest juvenile detention camp, Khalil Cummings is re-kindling a conversation that stretches back more than a millennium. Cradling a djembe drum, Cummings’ adept hands tease out the insistent beats of the soli rhythm, one of several hundred unique rhythms used to mark all kinds of life events from the Malinke tradition of West Africa.