The community-based arts environment is uniquely suited to addressing the needs of young people in the area of growing emotional intelligence. The arts offer specific structures, systems, and dynamics that allow for the emergence of the emotional adolescent self. Leaders in the community-based arts field must consciously position their organizations and programs as primary tools in the work of the reclamation of youth and adolescent emotional life. In preparing to collaborate artistically with youth, it is critical for artists to be able to talk confidently about feelings, as well as to consider the various emotional settings that might arise in the context of that collaboration. Further, an adequate understanding of emotional development in youth yields important information that teaching artists may use to better understand how adolescents develop artistically, cognitively, and socially. This article offers a brief overview of recent research which describes some of the ways that emotions play a part in various developmental tasks of the adolescent. A deeper understanding of adolescent development enables adult artists to support youth in the reclaiming of their own emotional terrain.