Partnership With Beyond the Bars

Beyond the Bars is a music and career planning program dedicated to interrupting cycles of violence for youth in Philadelphia. Beyond teaching students how to play instruments, make beats, and produce music, Beyond the Bars provides a space where youth can learn to express their emotions, build confidence, engage in self-exploration, and realize their potential as leaders. It also combats issues of divestment, mass incarceration, trauma, and violence through accessible, safe, and community-led programming across Philadelphia.

Beyond the Bars Project Background and Aims

CVP researchers were introduced to Matthew Kerr and Christopher Thornton, co-directors of Beyond the Bars), at the 2021 Community-Driven Research Day (CDRD) event.   

Beyond the Bars is a well-established organization within the Philadelphia community. Its student-driven and community-led model has garnered positive feedback from youth, staff, and community partners alike. Through a CDRD grant, Beyond the Bars and CVP partnered to conduct a formative evaluation of the organization with the aim to more systematically describe its program model and impact. 

As part of the evaluation, we conducted interviews with program stakeholders, including students, community partners and instructors, to address three key aims:

1. Characterize core program components and activities 

2. Identify short- and medium-term youth-realized outcomes of programming

3. Determine personal, contextual, and external factors that influence program engagement

We also assembled a community-academic project team to ensure the project produced research that was rigorous, valid, and meaningful. In addition to CVP staff, our team included:

• Beyond the Bars leadership: Co-Directors Matthew Kerr and Christopher Thornton

• Beyond the Bars youth advisors: Xadyah Holness, Aquil Shakur and Daniel (DJ) Jones

Beyond the Bars Accomplishments and Next Steps

To date, the team has:

• Co-developed interview guides customized for each stakeholder group 

• Conducted interviews with 17 students, 6 community partners and 5 program instructors

• Co-developed codebooks, coded all interview transcripts and conducted thematic analysis of coded data

The team is engaged in broad dissemination of these findings, including: 

• Co-hosting a community celebration and concert featuring a youth-led presentation highlighting key interview findings on the program’s impact on students, a gallery walk with quotes from interviewees and artwork by youth advisor and artist, Xadyah Holness, and a student band performance

• Developing a program logic model that distills the program’s impact on students, staff, and the broader community 

• Creating a multipurpose research brief highlighting Beyond the Bar’s programming, values, and impact in a format that is accessible for potential students, community partners, or funders

• Presenting on the findings and process of community-engaged research partnerships to academic audiences at national conferences, including the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR) and ResilienceCon

• Preparing peer-reviewed manuscripts to share positive impacts of community programming