Art and Gun Violence: Healing and Prevention
By: Alexander Eshelman
Tags: Gun Violence Prevention, Music, Nonprofit, Healing From Trauma, Art

Meaningful conversations about art and gun violence can be endlessly broad. I have been in circles of artists affected by gun violence and survivors of gun violence, and many would be shocked at how diverse the people affected are. I have seen art by people who survived serial killers, and I have seen art by gangsters who live a life of crime; I have seen art by parents whose children were shot at school, and I have seen the art of mothers who lost their babies to street violence. I am writing this paper to further my own understanding of the relationship between art and gun violence, and to determine how art can be used for gun violence prevention and by survivors for healing.

As I began researching the painful relationship between art and gun violence, I first searched to learn more about why art has a relationship with gun violence. At our first Guns Down, Mic Up! event, my work partner Vince and I asked everyone in attendance why they think there is a relationship between gun violence and art, and if they think the two can be separated. The first person to respond was Ronald Scott, who is the founder and executive director of Brothers at Peace, a non-profit organization in New Orleans, LA, that provides care, recreation, and enriching programs to at risk male youth 7 to 17 years of age. Directly quoted from Scott:

“We actually lost one of our kids, Benjamin. He was 16 going on 17 years old and we lost him to gun violence. One of the things we continuously preach is that we do not let the music and outside influence control us… when you put on certain songs, it’ll take you to a place where you’re bobbing and can get gassed to do some really weird stuff off that music… we need to teach kids how to listen to music and push the narrative that the artists making this music have money and send their kids to good schools; you’re living the life that they are just rapping. We need to teach them from a young age how to decipher and unravel that so that they can walk their righteous path while listening to the music and not be influenced by it.”

Scott spoke to the importance of not allowing young people to be devoured by the world, and he said repeatedly that all we can do is attempt to intervene before the critical moment when someone makes a terrible decision that they cannot undo. As a direct response to the “why is gun violence tied to art?” question, particularly in mainstream media, Scott made an insightful point: popular artists write music about violence that inspires violence. This is simple and makes sense, but does not comprehensively tell the full story. More accurately, artists who often come from violent upbringings write music about violence, which inspires more violence.

Later on during our dialogue at Guns Down, Mic Up!, Scott made another point about how sometimes, artists mature and move onward from writing violent subject matter while still speaking on the same situations they went through. He identified this growth as pivotal. This made me question why some artists can mature and others seem unable to when portraying their lived experiences. From an artist’s perspective, I identified the three main portrayals of gun violence as 1.) raw expression of trauma, 2.) glorification of violence, and 3.) storytelling. These soft categories are not separate from each other and you typically see overlap, but almost every case of violent music falls under one of these three criteria. Also, there are artists who do not come from violent backgrounds that chose to make violent music because of its commercial appeal. Similarly, there are artists who make violent music who do not want to, but who have signed record deals that strictly dictate every aspect of their product.

To understand occurrences of violence in art, and to better understand these artists’ intentions, I will examine modern hip hop. Within the broader gun violence and art conversation, rap music is positioned within its own unique controversial space. After the early 2000s when hip hop finally became popular to mainstream audiences, “trap music”, a subgenre of hip hop founded circa 2005 in the southern United States, established total dominance of the music industry. Now, almost every pop song you hear uses trap drums and snappy digital percussion. Modern rap music has been so sensationalized and propped up by wealthy investment, that as long as trap drums are catchy to listeners, none of us even have the choice to look away — you see and hear trap music everywhere.

Despite total dominance of the music industry, rappers have not sacrificed hedonistic lyrics, rather they seem to have increased in volume. In the case of a problematic image and lyrics, rappers usually receive the most blame when in reality, consumers, record labels (“producers”), and media outlets (the link between consumers and producers) should be held more accountable. Rappers are commodified to be sold as a product in ways that clearly follow historical trends rooted in racism. The following quote from “Hood Politics: Racial Transformation in Hip Hop” by Richard Spradlin, concisely describes this commodification:

“Black art, as a complex web of interpersonal artistic relationships, becomes sets of pre-formed understandings and associations that force a work of art to be seen and felt as specifically, uniquely, and differently black. This reduction “presupposes a correlation between the work’s significations and a set of race concepts, it attaches the object’s denotators to a predetermined range of possible connotators,” which causes us to “devise ‘relevant’ external correspondences, which ground a more decisive third move that establishes equivalences with what we are considering and have already considered, suspected, or perhaps just wondered.” Our everyday usage of these concepts erodes our connection to what they are meant to represent, aggregating vague, inaccurate understandings and representations of black experiences into an object to be witnessed and understood as different”.

This particular piece of analysis reveals accountability that falls on consumers. Building on my earlier quote of Ronald Scott explaining how young listeners struggle to understand that most successful rappers who make violent music are not living the life they portray, the Spradlin passage I cited reveals that Black youth consuming violent rap music could misinterpret it as an affirmation of the low expectations society has of them. Furthermore, non Black consumers can fall for the same misinterpretation, coming away with jaded misrepresentations of Black people. As consumers enjoy twisted and violent caricatures of Blackness, the “coolness factor” associated with life in the streets increases, the associations between violence and Blackness increases, and this cycle continues.

On the producer side, record labels are often at fault because they control the power dynamics of each artist relationship. Independent artists retain full creative control over their image, but when dealing with a record label, an artist’s image becomes “a negotiation between the record label who distributes and finances the music and the artists who perform these negative tropes.” Unsurprisingly, music companies’ expectations of artists are primarily whatever will earn the most money. Currently, ultraviolet hip hop is trendy but this has not always been the case. Recently, Shannon Sharpe interviewed Ice Cube, Los Angeles business mogul and former member of the rap group N.W.A. Sharpe asked Ice Cube if they foresaw their success given that the violent music they were making was not selling as much as the popular records of the late 80s and early 90s. Ice Cube responded:

“At the time, we thought those records [hardcore and explicit records] would be sold in the section of the record store with all the dirty comedy records… when they started to put it out front where all the regular hip hop was and people just started buying it, we knew we had a style that was unique, that was different… it was a few people who had dibbled and dabbled in that style [gangster rap] and then others like Ice T and the Geto Boyz came along.”

N.W.A. legitimately was the first gangster rap music to go nationally viral, and songs such as F*ck the Police and Straight Outta Compton are still household names. As Ice Cube explained, listeners flocked to this sound because it was different from anything else out.

Now thirty years later, rap fans still listen to violent rap for the same reason- it is unique and strains societal boundaries in ways no other genre is doing. This has not changed, and neither have the reactions to gangster rap. Rap fans and critics of the genre’s violent nature are posited opposite of each other, and what the critics bring to the table is often shunning notions of censorship that are counterproductive to harm reduction and insensitive to external factors such as poverty and racism.

The immature spitefulness to authority with which gangster rappers carry themselves is shocking and confusing to cultural outsiders who come to their own negative conclusions about hip hop culture. The importance of such an image is supported by mass media which sets expectations of artists for consumers, and to show how media outlets create these expectations, we will analyze drill music. A comprehensive understanding of how art and gun violence are connected in the modern era must include an understanding of drill music, which is the most preeminent form of contemporary gangster rap.

Drill music originated in the Southside of Chicago in the early 2010s, and reached its peak in Chicago by 2015. Since then, drill music has spread to New York and the United Kingdom, and the subgenre has seen an increase in collaboration between UK producers and American rappers. Drill music takes its name from “drilling”, which in Chicago is slang for shooting someone. Drill music is characterized by its heavy bass, hard hitting beats and most notably, its extremely violent lyrics. Musically, while drill beatmakers do tend to use trap drum kits, the sound is noticeably darker than most trap music, and the drum patterns and tempo tend to differ from trap as well. In stark contrast to my earlier point about many rappers not really living the life they portray, the violence in drill music is shockingly authentic, and drill rappers involved in gang activity frequently diss their “opps” (slang for opposing gang members) by name in their lyrics. This heightendeed authenticity is due in large part to the fact that most Chicago drill rappers hail from the South and West ends of the city, where poverty and homicides are largely consolidated.

Unfortunately, no one has to follow the drill scene for a long time before any one of the most popular rappers is killed. The story of drill music is a back and forth of revenge murders by opposing gang members, primarily the Black Disciples (BDs) and Gangster Disciples (GDs), but generally between any gangs competing in drug trafficking. A concise background on BDs and GDs from “Gang Threat Analysis” by Dr. George Knox says,

“The Black Disciples are the Chicago “folks” gang that gained international notoriety in 1994 by executing its eleven-year-old member “Yummy”. It is also unique in its comparison with another African-American gang, the Gangster Disciples. While the GDs are structured like a corporate enterprise, the BDs are structured more like a religion where gang leaders are called “ministers”. The BDs trace their historical roots directly to “King David Barksdale”.”

BDs such as Chief Keef and Lil Durk thrive in the music industry while GDs have essentially been blackballed from the mainstream, and this is of course directly related to the intersection of gang and industry politics.

With the rise in popularity of drill music, these ongoing gang wars went viral and have been closely documented by YouTubers and artists themselves. The violence has been trivialized to the extent that fans of the music become interested in rappers’ gang activities as a source of entertainment, sometimes more so than their actual music. Opposing gang members laugh at each others’ fallen brothers, fans laugh along, teasing and encouraging revenge, and rap media sugar coats what is happening by turning gang violence into a playful narrative that we can see unfold in real time.

One of the most infamously insensitive documentations of Chicago gang violence amidst the drill scene is “The War in Chiraq”, which was a YouTube series produced and uploaded by Livingston Allen, aka DJ Akademiks, from about 2014 until 2017. The episodes are short and consist of Akademiks reporting on gang violence in Chicago, particularly instances involving rappers. This video series is considered especially despicable first, because Akademiks’ audience is composed of white suburban teenagers and cultural outsiders who are far removed from violence and consume Black trauma as entertainment. Secondly, what you notice when watching his videos is that they are far too light hearted for whatever story he is covering, and he is often making fun of someone who has been shot or is experiencing unfortunate legal circumstances.

Figure 2: A screenshot of an episode of “The War in Chiraq” featuring currently incarcerated rapper Rondo Numba Nine weilding a rocket launcher in Chicago

The following excerpt from Andre Jgee’s on article on DJ Akademiks further reveals how his actions directly encourage violence in rap and the commodification of Black people for entertainment:

“Akademiks is a feedback loop for a suburban fanbase that doesn’t see the humanity of Black artists. Pop culture has fed sheltered white teens their limited scope of Blackness, and he contributed to the fragmentation by framing Chicago as a lawless badland of “coons” and “savages,” even referring to nine-year-old Antonio Smith, who was murdered in 2014, as a “mini pack (an “opp pack” is Chicago parlance for a deceased enemy).”… He became the chief narrator of 6ix9ine’s yearlong antagonizing of Black artists in 2018. He giddily posted about all of the Brooklyn rapper’s conflicts — even the ones that could have wound up with someone incarcerated or dead. He stirred the pot in the conflict between 6ix9ine and Chief Keef, which culminated in 6ix9ine putting a hit on Keef which thankfully failed… Akademiks gained his visibility by wagging his finger at violence, but he sustains his fame by instigating it.”

After watching DJ Akademiks’ videos, you may think they are just low brow and immature media that thrives off of a niche fanbase, and could not possibly command mainstream attention. This could not be further from the truth, because in 2017, Complex, a popular media outlet based in New York, launched their webseries “Everyday Struggle” starring Joe Budden and DJ Akademiks. “Everyday Struggle” was a morning show covering news in hip hop and pop culture, and by seeking out DJ Akademiks to host the show, Complex very intentionally was trying to take advantage of his white suburban fanbase of teenagers who enjoy gawking at Black misfortune. Complex effectively used DJ Akademiks as, “a trojan horse representing the interest of suburban teens enamored with Black culture.”

This is one instance of a media personality supporting negative trends, however this has been a constant in hip hop reporting for all of the genre’s history. A content analysis of The Source magazine (which was chosen for being the longest running hip hop magazine, founded in 1988) was conducted by Rutgers School of Public Health in 2013. The results show that about 80% of articles in the magazine feature violent categories in the text, and about 30% of articles feature violent imagery. From the study:

“With respect to violent categories, having a violent “thug” reputation was the most prevalent and perhaps it is indicative of the importance paid to the phenomenon of the violent identity and reputation that is so pervasive in hip-hop culture … One issue (December 2001) designated itself “The Beef Issue” and interviewed four subjects that were involved in high profile feuds at the time. In pictures, aggressive body language was the most popular, again perhaps related to the importance of violent identity and reputation.”

Because violent figures in hip hop are oftentimes idolized by younger members of their fanbases, from their study, Rutgers suggests these negative portrayals have potential to impact younger audiences. Going back to drill music in Chicago, Rutgers’ research paired with our knowledge of how gangs prey on youth searching for guidance shows that these violent portrayals are even more harmful to Black and brown youth in under-supported communities. Gangs spend little resources on recruiting because children typically come to them for lucrative opportunities. As children in impoverished communities idolize violent figures in rap, they will naturally seek out similar figures in their own communities, leading them to a life of gang violence.

Media outlets such as The Source and Complex are household names that many consumers look toward for information and consider reputable. They have more money and a considerably larger outreach than a single YouTube channel like The War in Chiraq, so by giving a platform to individuals such as DJ Akademiks, they encourage listeners to support violent trends in hip hop. Over time, this enforces a baseline level of violence and ignorance in hip hop that listeners grow accustomed to. The status quo being violence prevents any growth over time, which is why gun violence has been constantly present in hip hop since the early days of gangster rap.

For this paper, here is the extent to which I will analyze why art and gun violence are so closely related. Essentially, now in music, gangster rap is the dominant portrayal of gun violence and as I explained, this culture is propped up by consumers, producers, and mass media, who together create violent expectations for artists to meet. Subsequently, these artists who are role models inspire children to pursue gangs who are actively preying on young people. Some would see this cycle and then claim that hip hop has an objectively negative impact on the youth. This nihilistic outlook is inconclusive and offers no solution because young people will not stop listening to rap, as the genre only continues to grow in popularity. Instead, I believe measures of gun violence prevention must work with the music. Because hip hop is rooted in Black culture, condemning rap altogether has a disparate racist impact, and it is not fair to discourage the creative development of children just because they are interested in rappers. In the second half of this paper, I will be exploring the potential that art and music have for gun violence prevention and healing for survivors of gun violence.

At our second Guns Down, Mic Up!, we asked our audience if they thought art could be more effectively used to prevent gun violence or if it is better suited as a healing component for survivors. Gerard, one of our poets, suggested that art and poetry is effective for gun violence prevention as a tool for conflict resolution. His point was that by using your words to tell your story, you can take people places and make them understand you so that disagreement does not need to culminate in violence. Jamie, someone we work with from The Fortune Society, NYC, came with poems collected from prison inmates in California. She made the point that art can help progress healing not just for victims of gun violence, but also for perpetrators. Art can help people who have inflicted harm take ownership of their behavior and come to terms with their actions. To one degree or another, art can be used for prevention and healing, and viewing these two approaches as long term solutions for gun violence prevention begs greater questions about charity versus justice.

The difference between charity and justice is that charity is generally focused on harm reduction and acts of kindness to those misfortuned while justice focuses on righting wrongs by correcting systematic inequality. Metaphorically speaking, charity is putting a bandaid over a cut while justice is cleaning and stitching up a wound. While bandaids are sufficient for scrapes and papercuts, putting a bandaid on a bullethole would obviously be insufficient. Unironically, gun violence as a societal issue is similar in this way to bullets penetrating flesh because both problems require thorough remedies. If you stitch up a bullethole without removing the bullet, the person shot can still die, and responding to gun violence just with acts of charity will not stop its cause.

From my research, I have found that using art for healing is like charity and that using art for prevention is like justice. Charity and justice are often posited against each other because charity is viewed as a pretentious half measure that is complacent to societal issues, since it does not actually correct them like justice does. However, in the case of art for healing and prevention, I disagree with this notion because I believe methods of healing and prevention need to work together. While helping people therapeutically heal from trauma may not decrease violence as directly as organized prevention efforts, healing is just as crucial because whether we like it or not, gun violence exists and survivors deserve solace.

“Healing” as a blanket term is somewhat arbitrary, so I first want to discuss what healing means and what sorts of pain art can help us heal from. It is important to define repeatable actions for healing processes so that people can follow a path to improvement. Healing should be an integrated mental and physical exercise of self improvement, because it is a struggle to get your mind right if you are in poor physical health and vice versa. However, art has more potential for mental healing than physical because obviously, art has less potential to impact one’s physique. A grounded theory content analysis conducted by Doctor Thomas Egnew in which he interviewed several doctors concluded that, “Healing may be operationally defined as the personal experience of the transcendence of suffering… healing is an intensely personal, subjective experience involving a reconciliation of the meaning an individual ascribes to distressing events with his or her perception of wholeness as a person.”

As stated in the quote, healing is different for everybody so identifying replicable actions may seem challenging, however there do seem to be certain hurdles that anyone trying to heal needs to cross. Egnew explained that healing usually involves reconciling with traumatic life events, and that healing helps people achieve “wholeness” with regard to their purpose. Most people value feeling a legitimate sense of purpose in their life, and the world could use a lot of healing. The clear replicable action that people need to make routine is reconciling with traumatic events in their life, even in cases that they are the perpetrator. Moving past the darkest moments in our lives, not by ignoring and trying to forget about them but by taking ownership, is something that everyone should practice and for many, art is the best outlet for this ownership. To illustrate how art can be effective for healing purposes, we will again look at hip hop, this time in a way more broadly than our previous analysis of drill music.

Hip hop artists have used their music to express their pain and tell their stories for a long time. One of the most popular rappers, Kendrick Lamar, has employed storytelling on many occasions to recount graphic depictions of trauma. On his song Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst, Lamar first raps from the perspective of his friend who is trying to make it out of the streets, but fails and is killed in a shootout. “I woke up this morning and figured I’d call you in case I’m not here tomorrow.” The song follows an audio skit in which that same friend’s younger brother is also killed in a shootout. In the second verse, Lamar raps from the perspective of a woman whose sister, “Kiesha” (an alias), was murdered while prostituting. “You wrote a song about my sister on your tape and called it Section 80 the message resembled Brenda’s got a baby.” Lamar’s friend who was killed in a shootout says for Lamar to rap about him if he is killed in the streets (immediately before the verse is cut off by gun shots), but Kiesha’s sister is condemning Lamar for having the audacity to rap about her family’s situation. Finally, from Lamar’s third verse:

“And you’re right, your brother was a brother to me/ And your sister’s situation was the one that put me/ In a direction to speak on something that’s realer than the TV screen/ By any means, wasn’t trying to offend or come between/ Her personal life, I was like “It need to be told”/ Cursing the life of twenty generations after her soul/ Exactly what’d happened if I ain’t continue rappin’ Or steady being distracted by money drugs and 4–5s.”

As he says in his lyrics, Lamar draws inspiration from the hardships he witnessed growing up. These hardships inspired growth of the kind that Ronald Scott was talking about at our first Guns Down, Mic Up! Of the original categories I described of gun violence in art, Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst is clearly a reflection of traumatic experiences through storytelling. With this track in particular, Kendrick Lamar sings a hopeful song about a world of pain and sin to reconcile with his trauma, and he takes ownership of his behavior. This is how Lamar transcends his suffering to healing effect, and from the time he began to write about these serious topics, continuous growth in Lamar’s character is heard in his music.

While Kendrick is considered a rap prodigy whose complex songs have garnered critical acclaim and display personal growth, for the purposes of healing, “It is accessibility and inclusivity that makes Hip Hop such an effective therapeutic tool for working with young people” says Dr. Alexander Crook, University of Melbourne. The low barrier of entry for beginners who want to contribute to the world of hip hop is why people from all walks of life flock toward the genre. This is also what makes hip hop and poetry alike effective tools for gun violence prevention, particularly as secondary prevention strategies.

Higher education considers secondary strategies for gun violence prevention to be measures that target a specific at risk demographic. These strategies are secondary to primary or universal prevention efforts which address the general public, such as gun control legislature. Research shows there are certain indicators that can be used to predict which demographics are most at risk to be involved in gun violence. For instance, “unmet mental health needs for conditions linked with violence to self (such as depression) or others (such as paranoia), lack of mental health care, abuse of alcohol” all indicate that someone is more likely to commit gun violence. As I explained in the previous section of this paper, hip hop has great potential for healing, so I suggest that we can interject in potential perpetrators’ downward spiral toward gun violence by giving them opportunities to heal from trauma with art. Using art to put in the work necessary to heal from trauma can change an individual’s life course, potentially saving them from being lost in the system, hurting others, or being killed. Admittedly this justice feels slow to achieve and secondary to legislative gun control, however making art resources available for at risk youth everywhere on a large scale is a kind of justice, and there would surely be some noticeable long term impact.

One more point I have to make on this matter is that I do not agree with academia that helping targeted at risk groups is secondary to helping the general public. This sentiment seems harmful and contributes to race and class segregation, because what benefits at risk youth should be considered beneficial to the general public. Furthermore, labeling these tactics as “secondary” supports popular notions that the effectiveness of art for societal improvement is limited. We live in a scientific society that values qualitative results which are easily monetized, and people are less open minded than if we lived in an artistic society. The healing potential of art is only limited by what our leaders are willing to invest in the arts, and by our imagination. Research shows that teaching life skills, community involvement, and providing alternative activities decrease violent behaviors in youth, and financially, “art and culture programs are low-cost solutions with an accepted estimated average cost of $2600 per student per year (adjusted for inflation), considerably lower than the average yearly cost per incarcerated youth of $100,000.” If everyone could experience the therapeutic effects of art, our society would become more artful, and this has potential to positively impact the world.

Unfortunately, because we Americans are not privileged to live in an artistic society, it is important for us to construct artistic communities that can impact change more quickly than government organizations. Several times, I have referenced Guns Down, Mic Up! which is a project of ZING!, the community I am working to grow as a part of my work for OPEN DOORS. What I have found the most interesting about growing a community thus far is that everyone has a different reason for staying. Particularly with our open mic nights, the idea of winning prizes is what gets people into the door, but our attendee retention is decently high and after people share work, they express feeling better than they did before. For example, one member of our group who is an ex-convict has told us their story of how poetry helped guide them to a brighter place in life. Providing an artistic safe space for that person to keep returning is a stabilizing factor and feels important to their overall life improvement; which is why we are seeking more at risk youth to attend our events. When multiple individuals change their actions (ex: focusing on art instead of street life), the effect snowballs and can be felt in communities- the potential for tangible gun violence prevention through art is clear, and the responsibility falls on us to believe in art and to invest in the creative development of young people.

I have proven to myself with Guns Down, Mic Up! that community can be the glue that holds people together, helping them maintain a positive life path. At our most recent event, I directly asked our members what this community means to them. One person responded, “this is a safespace to express yourself that you don’t get in day to day life. Society is very oppressive because there’s a status quo you need to abide by. There’s very few spaces that one could be themselves. In a society such as this, the sheer action of thought could be so radical. The fact that everyone could attach themselves to a thought and build a tangible result is the sheer essence of change and radicalism.” Another person responded “I appreciate how safe it is here. I have an extreme amount of performance anxiety when it comes to poetry because I have less experience, but it’s easier if you do it more. I like this community because it’s easy to come to and helps me defeat my anxiety.”

The first quote is related to the earlier discussion on how we do not live in an art society. They went on to explain that communities such as ZING! that bring people from different walks of life together to share experiences are exactly how radical thought is spread. Opening peoples’ minds, one person at a time, and healing everybody together, feels like a “primary gun violence prevention strategy” because we come together as members of the general public to uplift each other. The second quote sheds light on the effectiveness of art as a “secondary gun violence prevention strategy.” Again, research shows a correlation between mental illness and gun violence, so to hear someone say that our events are helping them defeat anxiety is inspiring. Clearly, healing from trauma must be a part of long term solutions to ending gun violence, and I have shown that art plays an important role in these solutions. Next we will explore the barriers to implementing art-based-prevention-strategies, and how these can be overcome.

Both from my own experience trying to organize events and from my research on gun violence prevention, reaching out to at risk youth is consistently challenging. Directly engaging with the young people who most need support is critical to the art-healing-prevention process I outlined, so we should take time to understand why it can be so difficult to get in touch with these kids. For one, it is difficult to reach at-risk young people because many of them do not trust adults. Youth growing up in dangerous environments tend to have less positive experiences with adults, as well as more negative experiences with them, such as abuse. “The most important thing is to gain trust from the people in the community. You have to take care of this precious gift. I’ve seen programs that have been kicked out of a community because people have lost faith” said Julio Moscoso, the then (2007) Outreach and Transition Manager, CEDRO, Peru. Getting in touch with young people who need help is about building trust and listening to their ideas.

Another barrier to the use of art for gun violence prevention is that in public schools, children are becoming less exposed to art over time and are given less chances to take art classes. The National Endowment for the Arts conducted a survey of public participation in the arts in 2008 and subsequently published an article on their findings titled, “Arts education in America: What the declines mean for arts participation.” From that article:

“The early disinclination to consider the arts as serious academic subjects continues to this day. The arts are widely assumed to be expressive and affective, not cognitive or academic. Despite growing awareness among some educators and cognitive scientists that many of the fundamental processes of art-making are profoundly cognitive — reinforcing the building blocks of all thought — and despite the enormous discipline required to master arts skills and make high-quality art, the arts are often associated with play and luxury, not with the work ethic and discipline associated with school and academics.”

Especially in low income communities, children may have less or no opportunities other than at school to participate in art, so a national decline in teaching art will have an unequal effect on children.

As standardized testing has become a more integral part of our education system since the 1980s, schools will do anything to increase their students’ scores and are quick to make cuts to art programs because there is less empirical evidence of art’s impact on education. However, experimental evidence from Houston’s Arts Access Initiative gathered from a study they conducted in the 2016–2017 school year with 4th to 8th graders, which was in fact “the first large-scale randomized control trial of an arts education program implemented in an authentic educational setting”, revealed that, “Increasing students’ arts educational experiences reduces the proportion of students receiving a disciplinary infraction by 3.6 percentage points; increases writing achievement by 0.13 of a standard deviation; and increases students’ compassion for others by 0.08 of a standard deviation… these students demonstrate positive treatment effects on school engagement, college aspirations, arts-facilitated empathy, disposition for arts transfer, and perceived value of the arts.”

Clearly, art is an essential part of a well rounded education, and art education encourages imagination, as well as provides children with the skills they need to use art personally; that is, for their own healing. Unfortunately, despite there being clear evidence of how essential art is, art education in public schools continues to decline. This is why I believe that change must come from community organizations, and that to equip the youth with the artistic skills they need, capable adults such as myself need to provide accessible artistic spaces for young people, such as Guns Down, Mic Up! The silver lining of the gradual decline in funding for public school art programs over the last forty years is that there is so much room for improvement, and statistics show that NGOs and NPOs such as OPEN DOORS are ready to step into that space. From 2006 to 2016, the amount of nonprofits in America (registered with the IRS) increased by 4.5%. Nonprofits make up a considerable portion of America’s GDP at about 5.6%, and the fact that year after year, US adults volunteer more of their time suggests that nonprofits have the ability to command respect from our capitalist society. This is also why I believe that in our current system, nonprofits have more of an ability to spread art than public schools; because while art programs in public schools have been losing support, nonprofits are increasing and the amount of hours US adults are willing to volunteer is increasing.

This brings me to the conclusion of my paper on art and gun violence. The answers to my original questions are conceptual and long winded, hence the length of this paper, but exploring these questions, “What is the relationship between art and gun violence?”, “Can art be used by survivors of gun violence for healing?”, and “How can art be used for gun violence prevention?” has revealed the great potential of applied art. It seems like American society has fallen out of touch with its artistic side, and instead chosen an infatuation with numerically measurable capitalism. Yet, societal issues such as gun violence that are ever present in our history are confusing to us because their solutions are not arithmetical. Trying to end gun violence by thinking in terms of standardized tests and minimum sentences is ineffective, and it should be unsurprising that these complex problems have abstract artistic answers.

Works Cited

Allen, Livingston. “Rocket Launcher Toting Chiraq Savage ‘Rondo Numba Nine’ Sentenced to 39 Years in Prison for Murder.” YouTube, uploaded by The War In Chiraq, 5 July, 2016,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1THLAvslfA&list=PLdiTKyjNpum4e27sv_IyX1O

3rydMcJ4qj&index=5

APA Panel of Experts. “Gun Violence: Prediction, Prevention, and Policy.” American

Psychological Association, 2013, https://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/gun-violence-pre

vention

Bowen, Daniel H. and Brian Kisida. Research Report for the Houston Independent School

District, Volume 7, Issue 4, February 2019, Pages 10–17, https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/defa

ult/files/documents/Investigating%20Causal%20Effects%20of%20Arts%20Education%

20Experiences%20Final_0.pdf

Crooke, Alexander and Raphael Travis. “HIP HOP’S HEALING POWER.” The University of

Melbourne, 27 July 2017, https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/hip-hop-s-healing-power

Egnew, Thomas R. “The Meaning Of Healing: Transcending Suffering.” Annals of Family

Medicine, May 2005, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1466870/

Field Notes, Volume 2, Issue, May 2007, Pages 1–4, https://www.iyfnet.org/sites/default/files/Fie

ldNotes08AtRiskYouth.pdf

Frydenlund, Zach. “Introducing ‘Everyday Struggle’ Starring Joe Budden and DJ Akademiks.”

Complex, 3 April 2017, https://www.complex.com/music/2017/04/everyday-struggle-laun

ch-post

Green, Demetrius. Documenting Drill Music: Understanding Black Masculine

Performances in Hip-Hop. 2018. University of Kansas, Masters of Art dissertation.

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/

1808/28068/Green_ku_0099M_16185_DATA_1.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1

Ilan, Jonathan. The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 60, Issue 4, July 2020, Pages

994–1013, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azz086

Jgee, Andre. “DJ Akademiks: Ringmaster For White Voyeurs Of Black Culture.” More Fire. 13

July, 2020. https://morefire.substack.com/p/dj-akademiks-ringmaster-for-white

Kisida, Brian and Daniel H. Bowen. “New evidence of the benefits of arts education.”

Brookings. 12 February 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/

2019/02/12/new-evidence-of-the-benefits-of-arts-education/

Knox, George. GANG THREATS AND ANALYSIS: The Black Disciples. 2004. National Gang

Crime Research Center. https://www.ngcrc.com/bdprofile.html

Lamar, Kendrick. “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.” good kid, m.A.A.d city, deluxe ed.,

Aftermath/Interscope Records, 2012, track 10. Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/3q2

v8QaTnHLveAQzR6gvYm?si=Vpi2UHnRQWKuyIsRQK6huQ

O’Connell, Catharine. “THE CONFLUENCE OF CHARITY AND JUSTICE.” McMaster

School for Advancing Humanity. 2008. http://www.defiance.edu/mcmaster/documents/jou

rnal-2008–3-charity-justice.pdf

Pierce, Vincent. Guns Down, Mic Up!. ZING!, 20 November 2020. Webinar.

Pierce, Vincent. Guns Down, Mic Up!. ZING!, 4 December 2020. Webinar.

Pierce, Vincent. Guns Down, Mic Up!. ZING!, 11 December 2020. Webinar.

Rabkin, Nick and E. C. Hedberg. “Arts education in America: What the declines mean for arts

participation.” National Endowment for the Arts. February 2011.

https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/2008-SPPA-ArtsLearning.pdf

Rowney, Jo-Anne. “What is drill music? How it started in Chicago and when it came to the UK -

and why it’s seen as a problem.” Mirror. 7 August, 2018. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/

uk-news/what-drill-music-everyone-talking-13041323

Sharpe, Shannon. “Ice Cube on the rise & fall of NWA, beef with Eazy-E and ‘No Vaseline’ |

EPISODE 5 | CLUB SHAY SHAY.” YouTube, uploaded by Club Shay Shay, 21 October

2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um_xNtZ45wA&t=2s

Spradlin, Richard. “Hood Politics: Racial Transformation in Hip Hop.” Stance: An International

Undergraduate Philosophy Journal. vol. 9, 2016, https://www.pdcnet.org/collection/fsho

w?id=stance_2016_0009_0041_0050&pdfname=stance_2016_0009_0000_0041_0050.p

df&file_type=pdf. Accessed 2 November 2020.

“The Nonprofit Sector in Brief 2019.” National Center for Charitable Statistics Project Team,

June 2020. https://nccs.urban.org/publication/nonprofit-sector-brief-2019#:~:text=

Approximately%201.54%20million%20nonprofits%20were,sector%20contributed%20an

%20estimated%20%241.047.

T, Oredein and Lewis MJ. “Violence in Hip-Hop Journalism: A Content Analysis of the Source,

A Leading Hip-Hop Magazine.” Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway NJ USA.

19 July 2013, https://www.omicsonline.org/violence-in-hip-hop-journalism-a-content-ana

lysis-of-the-source-a-leading-hip-hop-magazine-2161–0711.1000223.pdf

“Towards a culture of non-violence: The role of arts and culture: Field kit.” Organization of

American States, 2011, https://www.oas.org/en/yearofculture/DOCs/manual%20campo%

20ingles.pdf