Our Arts Based Workforce Development programs have:
Created thousands of summer arts-based employment opportunities for poverty-threshold youth
Paid youth more than $2 million in wages
Hired and trained 160 chronically unemployed veterans to crew our productions, paying them more than $500,000 in wages, and providing 2,000 tickets to their families
We have received recognition from the National Youth Employment Coalition, National Summit for Arts Across the Military, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Justice, the National Endowment for the Arts, Actors Equity Association, and NAACP-Los Angeles, among others.
Will Power After School
Our signature youth serving program Will Power After School will continue to provide at-risk youth ages 15-21 with full-time arts-based employment at partner school sites in underserved communities. Students study, create, produce, and perform adaptations of Shakespeare plays under the guidance of trained teaching artists and peer mentors who are program alumni.
Recent Impact
In the spring of 2025, Will Power After School served the community at three LAUSD school campuses: Hollywood High School, Los Angeles High School for the Arts, and SEED LA Academy. We successfully hired and trained 77 poverty threshold high school students, paying them each $2,753 in wages (a total of $211,958) to study, perform and produce a theatrical production at their school campus.
In fall 2025 and spring 2026, we continued to serve students at Los Angeles High School for the Arts and SEED LA Academy.
Los Angeles High School for the Arts
SEED LA Academy
Hollywood High School
Veterans in Art (ViA)
SCLA’s Veterans in Art (ViA) program provides paid vocational training in technical theater arts and life-skills development for high need, honorably discharged U.S. military veterans. Launched in 2013, the program is SCLA’s arts-based transitional employment opportunity for U.S. military veterans who work as venue and scenic crews, audio engineers, wardrobe assistants, ushers, parking attendants, site specific marketers, technical directors, and actors for SCLA’s mainstage professional productions.
SCLA’s 2018 production of Henry IV, featuring Tom Hanks, was built entirely by veterans in the Veterans in Art program.
Veterans in Art Performance
Over the past year, the Veterans in Art ensemble has met to create their own original show that combines Shakespeare and their own writing. On March 15, they will perform their production for the public.
This program was in partnership with The Veterans Collective and US Vets to provide more arts programming to veterans on the West LA VA campus. The program was open to all, regardless of experience, and participants (residents on the campus and from around the city) were paid for their work.
“Shakespeare Night Live”
Written by the Ensemble of Veterans In Art & US Vets
in collaboration with William Shakespeare
"It's the dead of night and the museum is silent.
The hustle and bustle of crowds is gone.
All that remains are the wax figures of Shakespeare's characters.
They stand as ever ready sentinels to remind
and proclaim of the strange goings on in a faraway age.
And now in the quiet when all things are still,
perchance to dream they rest until..."
Sunday, March 15
3 PM
McCadden Place Theatre
1157 N McCadden Pl, Los Angeles 90038
Tickets $10