Making a Way Out of No Way

Introduction

Adolescents in marginalized communities face higher risks of worsening mental health outcomes and compromised brain development as a result of their exposure to adverse social determinants of health, such as poverty, violence, and inequality. These determinants can further contribute to social isolation by limiting access to safe and supportive opportunities for social engagement, leading to long-term negative effects on physical and psychological wellbeing. In the underserved neighborhoods of San Juan, Argentina, approximately 42.3% of residents live below the poverty line, with numbers rising to 56% for children under 14 years old, affecting the quality of their academic and extracurricular opportunities, and creating barriers to cultural engagement.

To mitigate these risks amongst youth populations in Argentina, the Making a Way Out of No Way project promotes arts-based interventions as effective, engaging, and culturally relevant strategies, and creates healthier social environments for disadvantaged adolescents.

Scope 

Making a Way Out of No Way was a 12-week, multicomponent intervention that integrated music education, brain health promotion, and prosocial development for 53 adolescents across 4 underserved neighborhoods of San Juan, Argentina.

Arts engagement has proven to be a viable resource to enhance social, emotional, and even physical wellbeing, by encouraging community cohesion, cognitive stimulation, and emotional regulation. Across arts modalities, this project focused specifically on music and participatory group music activities, informed by research highlighting the link between musical training and empathetic prosocial behavior, cooperation, and goal-sharing, especially amongst marginalized youth.

The program offered 90-minute weekly sessions, involving group guitar lessons that were paired with activities to facilitate healthy habits around emotional wellbeing, empathy, teamwork, and brain health. Argentinian guitar teachers collaborated with academics from the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, cultural practice experts from Creative Aging International, and researchers at the BrainLat Institute Chile, to develop music education models that address poor social and mental health amongst disadvantaged youth in San Juan.

Insights and Deliverables

The intervention was developed with workshops and feedback sessions involving adolescents, tutors, local musicians, and advisors, producing a program curriculum that ensured cultural relevance and community input. Capacity building workshops were delivered before program implementation, to support knowledge and provide practical guidance for facilitators, and to promote consistent, context-sensitive delivery of the intervention. Impact of the intervention was assessed using a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative pre/post assessments with qualitative data from participant reports, interviews, and natural language processing.

The following outputs were developed as a result of intervention preparation, dissemination, and evaluation:

• Structured pre/post assessment instrument informed by literature to assess 3 core domains: (1) brain health habits (e.g., sleep, nutrition, cognitive stimulation), (2) prosocial behaviors (e.g., empathy, cooperation, peer support), and (3) musical competencies (e.g., rhythm, harmony, ensemble coordination).
• Culminating performance for all participating adolescents on a public stage, marking the first time they had ever left their immediate neighborhoods, and providing opportunities for family and community engagement.
• A full manuscript of program development and evaluation, providing key insights of program implementation, and furthering the conversation around arts-based, community co-designed interventions for public health and community wellbeing.

The final manuscript is currently under review, and is expected to be published in the Spring of 2026.

Project Team

This project is led by Alejandra Davidziuk and affiliated researcher Agustin Ibañez from the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) in Chile, in collaboration with Dr. Nisha Sajnani (NYU Steinhardt) and Christopher Bailey, co-directors of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab. The manuscript development is supported by international institutions and researchers from Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Myanmar, the United States, the UK, and Switzerland.

Photo Credits: Sydelle Willow Smith, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, 2024

Funding and Support

Support for this project was provided by the Atlantic Fellowship network.