Armed Services Arts Partnership

The Armed Services Arts Partnership (ASAP) cultivates community and growth with veterans, service members, military family members, and caregivers through the arts. We promote expression, skill-building, and camaraderie through classes in stand-up comedy, improv, storytelling, creative writing, and the visual arts. Our innovative approach equips veterans with transferable life skills, a renewed sense of purpose, and improved well-being, while strengthening ties between veterans and their communities through the arts.

Classes & Workshops: We provide veterans with free, eight-week classes and one- to two-day workshops across an array of art forms (comedy, improv, storytelling, writing, and visual arts). These programs, which are led by top-tier teaching artists and ASAP program alumni, provide participants with a safe outlet for expression, skill-building, and social support. Classes culminate with graduation shows, which offer veterans a platform to share their stories with the public and broaden our communities’ awareness of the veteran experience.

Performances: We believe that veterans should have frequent outlets to tell their stories and showcase their talents. Therefore, beyond our grad shows, we partner with local organizations to host monthly community performances. The consistency and intimacy of these shows help build and sustain community among the military and civilian worlds.

Partnerships: Art education is a pathway toward community integration; consequently, our programs have been developed to facilitate a continued education trajectory. When someone completes an ASAP program, they can advance their artistic education with our arts partners. If they cannot afford the higher-level offerings, they may apply for support through our Scholarship Fund. This approach ensures that any veteran who wants to grow through the arts can do so with ASAP and our partners.

Training: Arts organizations and teaching artists are eager to offer programs for veterans and their families; however, they often lack the training to lead these programs. We activate teaching artists to work with the veteran and military population by training them to lead programming in a culturally-aware and trauma-informed manner.

In addition to ASAP’s leadership, which currently includes four full-time staffers, five part-time employees, and nine members on the Board of Directors, we are establishing avenues to build and expand our capacity. Our staff and volunteers serve as critical intermediaries in their local communities. We forge relationships with Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) behavioral health providers, military bases, and college student veteran service coordinators. The ongoing community ties that we foster help ensure that the veteran/military community is aware of local arts opportunities, trusts our partners, and actively refers participants to our programs.

Our Teaching Artist Training prepares artists to lead programming in a manner that is trauma-aware, informed by military culture, and aligned with ASAP’s values as a community arts organization. ASAP has developed sustainable program partnerships with dozens of arts organizations in our service areas and trained 50+ teaching artists to work with the veteran population.

We also develop strategic partnerships with local arts organizations, which are critical for activating the arts community to engage with veterans. Through our intro-level classes and workshops, we leverage the existing talents and resources of arts organizations to provide veterans, service members, and military families with access to the arts. However, sustained artistic engagement is even more important than artistic access. As such, our partnerships are structured so that program graduates are given the opportunity to continue their artistic practice with our community partners.

We partner with program evaluators to measure outcomes pertaining to quality of life, wellbeing, and resilience. Through our mixed-methods program evaluation design, we better understand our impact, ensure consistent programmatic improvement.

Through our capacity-building initiatives, we’ve just scratched the surface in furthering the impact of the arts on the wellbeing of veterans. We hope to continually expand our reach and hone our offerings to support veterans, service members, and military families as they integrate into their communities through the arts.

Outputs: We’ve served 1,600+ veterans through 275+ classes and workshops. Our alumni have performed for over 100,000 audience members — including shows at The White House and for President Jimmy Carter .

Outcomes: Our program impact evaluation shows that our programs produce statistically significant increases in our participants’ well-being and resiliency — and these improvements are sustained over time. To learn more, please visit asapasap.org/impact.

Key press: We have been featured in numerous major press and media outlets including CNN, ABC, NBC, BBC, NPR, PBS, and featured in The Washington Post, and Politico Magazine. To view these stories and articles, please visit asapasap.org/recognitions

Recognitions & Awards:
- Echoing Green awarded ASAP with its Global Fellowship, recognizing ASAP as one of 38 organizations changing the world in 2015.
- Americans for the Arts recognized ASAP as one of the country’s leading organizations engaging veterans through the arts in 2016.
- ASAP’s Comedy Bootcamp Course was recognized by Virginia Living Magazine as one of the “Best of Virginia” in their 2016 edition.
- HillVets awarded ASAP it's HillVets 100 award, naming it one of the 100 most influential organizations in the veterans/military space in 2016.
- ASAP was recognized on Forbes’ and Pacific Standard Magazine’s “30 under 30” list for social entrepreneurship in 2017.
- ASAP received the 2017 Newman’s Own Award in recognition of our work as one of the most innovative organizations in the veterans space.
- ASAP was featured on Preet Bharara’s “Cafe 100”, a list of 100 changemakers addressing the most pressing problems in America and around the world.
- ASAP was recognized on We Are The Mighty’s “Mighty 25 List” as one of the top 25 influencers supporting the military community in 2018.

Future: Our goal is to help hundreds of unique veterans through our classes, workshops, performances, and socials, and to reach a large audience to demonstrate the impact the arts have on the lives of veterans. We will equip instructors and instructors-in-training with the necessary tools and knowledge to successfully teach and interact well with veterans and service members. Finally, distribute $10,000 from our scholarship fund - ongoing and sustainable support to empower veterans to stay engaged with the arts.