The afterschool community has long embraced the arts as part of the constellation of services offered to youth during nonschool hours. However, there has been much less comprehensive research in, and support for, the arts outside of school. Despite the fact that the United States has many local, regional, and state examples of excellent partnerships between the arts and afterschool, as well as model community-based afterschool youth arts programs, in the arts learning field these partnerships and programs are only beginning to foster evidence-based research and disseminate "best practices." This paper calls attention to community youth arts in order to address the need for more formal and research-based alliances between the arts learning and afterschool fields. The author concludes that the afterschool and arts communities need to work with state and local arts agencies to identify experienced arts educators and teaching artists; define high-quality arts participation; and integrate social, developmental, and academic goals with rigorous arts programming that meets 21st century goals.