youth solutions
“i’m going to tell everyone i know — i did that.”
— ys participant
in the fall of 2013, while doing some r&d for a youth design + build program, my friend Heidi Schmalbach invited me to join a working group arts council new orleans was organizing. the charge of these artists, designers, public health professionals, and urban planning experts was to imagine a cross-sector, collaborative youth development initiative with youth and artists at its core. after nearly a year of monthly meetings and strategy sessions, we began developing what would become youth solutions — guided by the following goals:
1) ensure artists are accessed and deployed as creative and resourceful change agents
2) equip youth with valuable art and design skills, develop a curriculum that is culturally responsive and enables constructive grief & trauma interventions, and ensure youth acquire evidence that their contributions can positively impact their environments through thoughtful community engaged projects
3) develop greater awareness around how collaborative art-driven efforts can affect the multilayered process of building vibrant and healthy communities in urban areas
after securing some funding through an artPlace america grant and a nea our town grant, we implemented a handful of projects between 2015-2017, produced a curriculum and toolkit for art and design based practice, an developed assessment and evaluation materials.
watching the student catch up to the teacher!
1000 stories
on march 20, 2016, the arts council’s youth solutions team engaged super sunday attendees in a 1-day public art installation that utilized build-it! disks as canvases for individuals to express themselves through visual art and poetry. each individual disk was then used as a building block for a physical structure that evolved over the course of the day as youth and adults added their stories. the result was a collective ‘portrait’ of the new orleans community.
in addition to the installation, the project partners — arts council new orleans, young artists, young aspirations (yaya), big class, and the mardi gras indian council (mgic) — came together for a day long community art and poetry workshop that was led by youth. this was an opportunity for members of the central city community to create place-based poetry, collage and visual artworks, and have some fun building structures using the build-it! disks. additionally, members of the mgic spoke about the history of their culture in central city, the significance of super sunday, as well as the steps that the mgic is taking towards developing a cultural campus and how the city’s young people can become active participants in those processes.
if these buildings could talk...
the youth solutions team, in collaboration with the new orleans redevelopment authority (nora), young creative agency (yca), ashé cultural arts center, and the oretha castle haley boulevard merchants & business association, collected stories from the community through an interactive art installation at 1601 oretha castle haley boulevard. the installation, designed by youth from yca, activated a vacant lot along the historic corridor for two months -- inviting neighbors and visitors to identify and link stories to places along the boulevard. these stories, along with others that emerged through a three-part intergenerational storytelling series helped serve as a launchpad for other youth-led creative placemaking projects in central city.
it’s lit! literary snoball stand
during the 2016 summer, the youth solutions team engaged 4 high school students from the net charter high school in a 6 week paid design + build internship. students were exposed to the world of design and equipped with the tools to creatively express their ideas and bring them to life. the students were challenged to think critically about the environments that they and their peers occupy and come up with a design that provided a safe space for new orleans youth to come together and enjoy all things literature and snoballs. and they delivered! not only did they successfully design + build a beautiful space, the students gained valuable technical and soft skills along the way. we even had students teaching other students and adults how to weld by the end of the summer!
the project, done in collaboration with big class and the net, will be utilized throughout the remainder of 2016 as a mobile writing center/workshop space -- bringing creative writing opportunities to youth around the city.
some project stats:
* over 450 hours of youth work
* youth paid $10/hr for their work
* 3 artists/designers engaged and paid throughout the process
* over 200ft of steel welded
* over 800 screws/connections
photo by marcus alfred
this place: preserving stories from central city
this place was a series of storytelling events that highlighted, celebrated, and preserved the stories of the people, places, and practices that make central city what it is. in partnership with draydes public market, young artists, young aspirations (yaya), and ashé cultural arts center, we invited leaders in the community to share stories about food & culture, art & entrepreneurship, and joy & equity. these stories were documented by the historic new orleans collection to be archived in their permanent collection — ensuring that the voices of today can be heard tomorrow. community members at each event were also invited to share stories either on the mic or through a series of postcards that touched on various topics.
as part of the storytelling event at the market, youth from acting up! performed a flashmob-style skit they co-wrote with elders in the community — using the dryades public market as their stage.