This colloquium includes comprehensive analyses of the University of South Carolina Women’s Well-Being Initiative’s (WWBI) issues-based arts initiative for female juvenile offenders – including the assignment of the program, its effect on participants, and the artwork produced. A gender-specific program for female juvenile offenders, the arts initiative is “issues-based” – through interactive discussions and artwork, girls critically engage with issues and dominant ideologies that affect them on a daily basis. The program is also intersectional in design; its curricula take into account race, class, and gender, and are tailored to each group of women and their particular interests and struggles. The arts class gives these girls “in trouble” a space where they can renegotiate their identities through engagement with art and each other.