Youth Speaking up Through Art
A foundational belief for Trellis is that communities work better when they are learning from, support and working together. Through partnerships and active participation, individuals and organizations learn to see and hear common visions, dreams and goals they have for a flourishing community can be the ties that pull the community together. For our Trellis Crew, in particular, part of our mission is to help them experience other youth organizations around the city so they can see that students in other neighborhoods have the same feelings, struggles, experiences, dreams and desires.
Recently, two of our crew had the opportunity to at the Neighbors in Action Youth Center Media Arts Showcase and here is what they saw, heard and learned
“At the Black Lady Theater I learned about black youth, a life of a colored child or person is hard. There young black teenagers shared stories about important parts on there life about how it feels to be a black citizen. A life of young teenager is hard because some don’t even have the money to get to school or work. And people judge others of there color and not for who they really are. People deserve to express themselves and show there true colors of their personality and not just of their skin color.”
“In the black lady theater young teens ( two girls and one boy), who looked about 16-18yrs spoke about significant points in their lives were so important. I feel like life for people that live in an unsafe or unfair place can be hard for children to grow up in because all children want to do is be happy and live life easily. But not a lot of children can live that way due to gang violence, adult predators, rapists etc. Even racism effects children still to this day. But as we act older, it becomes more difficult to live our lives. Like if a teen goes to school far from home but has no money to get on the train or bus, to get the education they deserve, or maybe when you’re working and someone who doesn’t like the color of your skin treats you with disrespect but treats someone else the same color as them kindly. The world that we live in isn’t fair. Especially for black, Hispanic, African-American or any other race that isn’t fully American. But at the end of it all, we’re all immigrants. Because the people that found a Americans aren’t fully who they think they are, so they have no right to treat people any different. Black culture is very unique because black people don’t define themselves by their color, but who they are and who they choose to become.”