Young Audiences of Western New York Inc

Young Audiences of Western New York’s mission is to make the arts a part of young people’s lives in order to enhance their development as creative and productive human beings.  We offer assembly, workshop and long term residency programs with professional artists, committed to their craft, and using it as a tool for creative learning. Art forms include music, multi-media arts, theater, dance, and visual and literary arts.  We provide services in the eight counties of Western New York, including Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Niagara, Orleans, and Wyoming.

Young Audiences initially focused on bringing classical musicians and performances to schoolchildren in urban districts. In its first year, Young Audiences of Western New York provided 500 programs to over 75,000 children. By 1982, 20 years into its existence, Young Audiences WNY diversified its offerings to include all of the art forms, and offered workshops, residencies and assembly programs.

Today, Young Audiences WNY presents hundreds of individual programs, plus dozens of residencies, wherein teaching artists provide schoolchildren, their educators and families, with multi-disciplinary, multi-session education through the arts. These residencies create meaningful connections between artists and young people that might otherwise not be exposed to the arts—especially arts integrated into school curricula.

While the mission of Young Audiences of Western New York, to bring the arts to all the young people in our area, has not changed, the ways and means have; we see a not-so-subtle shift from simply inspiring young people to see and appreciate art, to also participating and understanding the arts in context of the world in general, and their lives specifically.