South Florida non-profit helps kids tap into their creativity to express themselves
"When I was teaching, I saw this gap that existed in a lot of schools. I began to go around to different schools and see that some schools have these arts programs, but then other schools didn't have them and I knew what it did for me," he said.
So taking his love for his students and art into consideration, Daughtry founded the
Art Prevails Project
non-profit.
It was born from his own experience as a child who needed an escape.
"I realized that was a place I could go when I needed to just express myself and over the years the idea of expressing and writing, putting things on paper just became a place of refuge for me," he said.
Daughtry set out on a quest to make art accessible for every child. The Art Prevails Project started in his car but has blossomed into much more.
With his signature programs, like Speak Your Piece and Write Out, Daughtry goes into schools to help students tap into their creativity and learn life skills.
"For our students who need to learn self-advocacy and those independent functioning skills, this is huge to help them prepare to go into their work-related fields," Hollywood Hills High School assistant principal Sara Pierce said. "What I think I love most is it really opens them up to possibilities they didn't think of before."
While Daughtry isn't a teacher by title anymore, he is still teaching students how to overcome obstacles and making Miami Proud.
"Like Whitney Houston said, I believe the children are the future," Daughtry said. "As a world, if we're ever going to be what we're destined to be, it's going to be in the hands of the children."
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Elle
12-06-2025
- Elle
Thirty Years Later, 'Jagged Little Pill' Is Still the Perfect Conduit for Female Rage
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. When Alanis Morissette was brainstorming songs for her first internationally-released album, Jagged Little Pill, which marks its 30th anniversary on June 13, her intention was to make a record that would absolutely blow her mind. 'That's all I wanted and it was all I could think about,' the singer-songwriter says. It was the mid-'90s and after Morissette's first two albums (released in Canada only), the 19-year-old Ottawa native had become known for a dance-pop style—an image and sound that industry insiders wanted her to keep. Morissette remembers record bosses in Canada who belittled her desire to express herself more boldly in both her lyrics and composition in her third album. 'Your contribution to the song you co-wrote is basically 0.08 percent,' she says they told her, dismissing any creative input she made. 'It was just the ongoing reduction of my contribution during my teenage years.' She took the artistic confinement as a cue to move to Los Angeles so that she could make music on her terms—only to come up against more of the same obstacles. Nobody wanted her to wander out of her musical niche: 'They were like, 'Oh you can't do that because that's not what you're known for, sweetheart,' or 'Oh, your publisher won't like it,'' Morissette tells me from her home in L.A., looking bare-faced and casual. The idea of being an artist who musically repeated herself made no sense to her. 'These people didn't get it—they didn't understand my evolution and what music meant to me,' she recalls. 'I wanted to write a record that marked what was actually happening.' She silently vowed never to be anyone's echo chamber: 'I said to myself I'm writing a record that is a direct fucking reflection of where I'm at or bust,' she adds. Many of the lyrics were ripped from her own experience. 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Yahoo
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- Yahoo
Daughtry, Seether to rock Rose Music Center in October
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