About Us
We Begin With Listening
Voices United is a creative community where people of all ages come together to connect, express, and grow—through the arts.
For over 30 years, we’ve worked alongside young people, artists, educators, and community members to explore what matters most in their lives. We don’t arrive with fixed answers. We arrive with curiosity, care, and creative tools that help people speak, listen, and imagine together.
Because every community is different, every Voices United experience is different.
We Respond to What's Needed
Our work is shaped by the voices in the room.
Sometimes that means creating space for healing after a difficult moment. Sometimes it means building leadership and confidence in young people.
Sometimes it means helping artists collaborate across cultures.
Sometimes it means simply bringing people together who might not otherwise meet.
We design each program in partnership with the community, adapting in real time, listening deeply, and evolving as needs change.
We Use Art as a Tool, Not the Goal
Through theater, music, movement, storytelling, and visual art, we create spaces where people can:
- Share their experiences
- Ask hard questions
- Build relationships across difference
- Explore solutions to real challenges
You don’t have to be an artist to participate. You just have to be willing to show up.
We Are For People of All Ages
Voices United brings together youth, adults, and elders in shared creative experiences.
We believe some of the most powerful learning happens across generations, when wisdom, curiosity, and lived experience meet.
We Build Lasting Relationships
What begins as a workshop or program often grows into something more:
- Ongoing collaborations
- Lifelong friendships
- A network of artists and change makers supporting one another
Our community doesn’t end when a program ends.
From Miami to Lesotho & Beyond
Voices United began in Miami and has grown into a global community.
Our work now connects people across cities, cultures, and continents including our ongoing partnerships in Lesotho and South Africa through Voices United Village.
These experiences offer something rare:
real connection, real exchange, and real relationships with people and place.
What We Believe
We Believe:
- Every voice matters
- Creativity opens doors that conversation alone cannot
- Community is built through shared experience
- Listening is where change begins
Step Into the Circle
Voices United grows through connection.
We partner with communities, artists, and organizations to co-create experiences that are rooted in real needs, real people, and real moments.
Wherever you are, we can meet you there.
Together, we build spaces for expression, connection, and possibility.
Come as you are.
There is room for you.
Looking Ahead
Voices United continues to grow through partnerships, community engagement, and the support of donors and collaborators.
As the need for connection, creativity, and dialogue increases, so does the importance of this work.
We remain committed to creating spaces where people can come together, share openly, and build something meaningful—together.
Our Story
Our Story
A Living, Evolving Practice
Growing Through Community
Voices United began with a simple but powerful realization:
young people needed a space to be heard.
In 1989, at just 17 years old, founder Katie Christie returned to Miami after participating in an international arts exchange during the Cold War. Surrounded by young people from different cultures, she saw both the possibility of connection and the deep divisions that existed between us.
She also saw something else:
young people had a lot to say, but very few places to say it.
So she created one.
What started as a small youth initiative in Miami—originally called Peace Child Miami—quickly grew into something much larger. Through theater, music, movement, and storytelling, young people began sharing their experiences, asking questions, and building understanding across differences.
And people listened.
Growing Through Community
A Living, Evolving Practice
Growing Through Community
Over the years, Voices United expanded beyond youth programming to include people of all ages; artists, educators, and community members, while staying rooted in the same core idea:
Create space. Listen deeply. Build together.
Rather than following a fixed model, the work evolved in response to the communities involved. Each program, each gathering, each collaboration shaped what came next.
Along the way, Voices United’s work began to draw wider attention, featured in media, highlighted in community conversations, and recognized for its unique approach to using the arts to bring people together across difference. These moments of recognition helped amplify the voices of participants and affirmed the importance of creating spaces where people feel seen, heard, and valued.
Thousands of people have participated over the years, bringing their stories, their creativity, and their desire for connection.
A Living, Evolving Practice
A Living, Evolving Practice
A Living, Evolving Practice
As Voices United grew, so did its reach.
What began in Miami now connects communities across the United States and internationally, including long standing relationships in Lesotho and South Africa.
Through these exchanges, the work deepened expanding beyond performance into a broader practice of dialogue, cultural exchange, and community building grounded in shared humanity.
The impact of this work can be seen not only in the programs themselves, but in the artists, educators, and leaders who carry these experiences into their own communities, many of whom continue to shape the cultural landscape in meaningful ways.
Still Becoming
A Living, Evolving Practice
Voices United is not a finished story.
It continues to grow, adapt, and respond, shaped by the people who are part of it and the times we are living in.
What has remained constant is the belief that:
- People need space to be heard
- Creativity can open doors where other approaches cannot
- Real connection is possible—even across difference
And that when people come together with openness and imagination, something meaningful can happen.
Recognition & Press
Recognition That Reflects Something Deeper
Voices United’s work has been recognized nationally and internationally for its unique approach to building community through the arts.
From its early years, the organization has been acknowledged as a model for bringing people together across difference, using creativity, dialogue, and shared experience to address some of the most complex challenges facing our communities.
Voices United has been featured in a range of media outlets, arts platforms, and community publications.
These features have helped amplify not just the organization, but the voices of the people within it.
Recognition That Reflects Something Deeper
Recognition That Reflects Something Deeper
Each feature, each spotlight, each acknowledgment points to something larger:
People coming together.
Stories being shared.
Communities being strengthened.
While we are grateful for the recognition, what matters most is the ongoing work, listening, responding, and creating spaces where something real can happen.