Schack Art Center gets grant to retain program for detained youth

Published 1:30 pm Thursday, July 16, 2026

EVERETT — The Schack Art Center will be able to continue operating an arts program serving youth within the juvenile justice system thanks to a more than $500,000 grant from a Seattle philanthropic organization.

The art center received the grant as part of $5 million distributed by Allen Family Philanthropies to organizations across the state to fund projects related to creative youth development, a practice combining modern understanding of how youth develop with processes to build skills over time, said Anh Nguyen, the foundation’s director of arts, youth and communities.

“Arts is like a tool, if you think of it that way, for well-being, for connection, those sorts of things,” Ngyuen said. “Which is different than arts education, which can be more focused on the arts skill-building element of it.”

The grant funding, spread over the next three years, will go toward the Schack Art Center’s existing Art Alternatives program, which provides weekly art classes to youth in the Denney Juvenile Justice Center in north Everett. The program has existed for 30 years, said Raedle Alburn, the art center’s executive director.

The goal of the program, she said, is to give young people involved with the justice system an opportunity to take part in artistic classes — including glass blowing, clay making, murals, calligraphy, painting and mosaics, along with other mediums — in a way that highlights them as individuals. The art center also offers paid internships for young people who want to continue in art programs after their initial court-mandated participation.

“It creates space for them to build relationships, to build creativity, to learn new skills, to feel valued and be seen,” Alburn said.

The funding to maintain the program came at a good time. The art center had received federal funding to help run the program for years, but that funding was set to expire in September.

Alburn hopes the opportunities students get through the program can help reduce recidivism rates and decrease the amount of youth involved with the justice system in the first place.

“Create more opportunities for youth to be involved in positive activities, and they’re going to decrease negative activities,” Alburn said. “And do it in places where youth don’t have those opportunities.”

For over three decades, Henri Wilson has been teaching classes to the young people in the detention center. A calligrapher who had owned her own letter arts business, she said she hopes to build relationships with the students and help them build skills to unlock possibilities they might not have realized were possible.

Wilson said it was encouraging that the Schack Art Center received the grant that would sustain the program’s funding.

“Anytime when you’re pushing to keep something working, having someone come alongside and say ‘Oh, yes we share that vision,’ is just really encouraging,” she said.

While she hopes that the young people would learn skills and life lessons through both he art and the acceptance offered by the instructors, Wilson also said the teachers learn lessons from the young people as well.

“In our work we get to realize there is more than one layer to each story, that everyone deserves a chance to be heard and learn new things,” Wilson wrote in an email. “Their individual stories are complicated and unique; what happens to them now can impact them for life too which can be a reason for continuing what we do.”

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.