Mission Statement

Express Yourself Milwaukee celebrates the power of creative arts to transform the lives of underserved youth in the community. Express Yourself immerses young people into the creative world of music, dance and visual arts, celebrating cultural diversity and collaboration. Throughout the year, the youth and artists of Express Yourself spend time creating visual art, performance pieces and set designs for their grand culminating performance.

The Express Yourself, Inc. (EY) model elicits life-changing results in the lives of young people by offering a consistent, long-term creative outlet for Milwaukee urban youth struggling with learning, behavioral, emotional, and or psychological difficulties, in large part due to the environmental factors influencing their lives such as mental health issues, incarceration, etc. Express Yourself Milwaukee (EYM) inspires hope by creating an environment where it is safe and desirable to be seen and heard, where positive and active participation in the community is the norm rather than the exception.

Our organization celebrates cultural diversity and collaboration by forming long-term partnerships with local agencies serving this demographic, allowing the youth involved in our program to feel less isolated. Through the Express Yourself model, these marginalized young people learn to transform the pressures of their daily existence – poverty, violence, incarceration and drug addiction, to name a few – by learning powerful, creative coping strategies within the artistic process.