$1 for the arts saves $9 on other costs.
After school arts programs save cities money. For every $1 spent on afterschool programs, $9 is saved by reducing welfare and crime costs, improving academic performance and increasing kids' earning potential.
Available after school arts programs cause neighborhood crime to drop up to 5%.
Arts programs reduce crime levels. Participation in afterschool arts programs causes juvenile crime to fall by 4.2% on average, and slightly more (5.4%) in lower-income cities.
More than 2x as likely to graduate college.
The arts help people succeed. Low-income students who are highly engaged in the arts are more than twice as likely to graduate college than their peers with no arts education.
Arts-engaged kids average 100 points higher on their SAT.
Students who take four years of arts and music classes average almost 100 points better on their SAT scores than students with only a half-year or less.
The arts improve your critical thinking by up to 18%.
Just looking at art improves your ability to think critically. Students from high-poverty schools, according to one study, experience an 18% effect-size improvement in critical thinking about art after a 1 hour tour of a museum.