Speaker Project Presentation 11/5/08


This Wednesday November 5, 6-8PM

Do not miss the young musicians and artists from Sociedad Latina performing at the Speaker Project exhibition in the Paine Gallery, Mass Art.

There will be lot’s of activities going on. Please let us know if you know any young people interested in performing, so that we may fit them in the agenda. We are inviting all CFC sites to take advantage of this opportunity.
This is a great opportunity to create connections between aspiring young artists and more stablished ones. (Everyone is an artist, remember?)

Thanks,

Hernando Buitrago

Posted by Hernando Buitrago | November 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

What do you need for the culminating event?

Please let me know what you need for the culminating event and email me your pix by Wednesday! Thanks,

–Christine

Date: Monday November 10, 5-8pm
Location: Hibernian Hall, 182-186 Dudley Street, Roxbury, MA 02119

What is the purpose of this event?
This event intends to celebrate the “aha” moments learned while working with the CfC team and by student participants during the pilot.  It will be an opportunity for teams to present to each other the projects that were developed during the residency and to show the “status” of the work. 

What exactly do I have to present?
Each organization will have up to15 minutes to make a presentation of the CfC project.  The presentation must include:

What do I have to bring?
We will have the space and equipment required for the presentation and Read more

Posted by Christine L. Weinberg | November 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Music an advocacy tools

This society is searching intensely to find ways to address issues that affect youth for  generations. It continues to go down blind alleys and run into dead end. The question often asked is whether Arts, Musics and poetry can  bring about social change and justice. As programs Director at the DNCC on many occasions students discussed with the issues that have  a profound effect on their lives, ie, gang, Violence, insecurity, unemployment, unsafe neigborhood, housing, police brutality to name a few. To address these issues, the Theater Arts program was created. Since its inception, the program has tackled several issues for example Teen violence, Unhelathy relationship, Love, Unity and Self respect. The program gave the students a channel of communication to address these issues in a way that promotes social change and justice. This year, the program takes a new direction for the better, through the support of the BARR Foundation program culture for change. As a result, I begin to appreciate the the Theater Arts program much more, because I see , first hand the impact it has on several students already. The program also reminds  me of the the impact  music has  in social change  and  social Justice. As a child growing in Haiti, under a dictatorship regine  for 29 years. Students could not expresss themselves. The freedom of press was abolished  and  students were not free to advocate for changes. Thanks to a  few brave musicians and groups , such as Scorpio fever with song like ” Ti moune yo” little children, they addressed the issue of poverty and lack of access to education,  song like ” Ke makak” the monkey tail, adressed , the notion of  a lifetime president ( president for life) as being unconstitutional,  Ti manno “Travay se libete”,  addressed the concern of teen unemployment and Bob Marley, songs regarding injustice and Wealth disparity . The Students were able to mobolize and used such songs to  create a movement which eventually got rid of  the Duvalier regine. It is clear that the students at DCNCC have several issues that they want to tackle through music and poetry to advocate social change and social justice. I read from a recent blog that music is part of civilization and music  lessons teach us to how to teach ourselves. It develps communication and  listening skills. But for  their musics  and the courgage of many  Haitian musicians  Haiti would  continue to be governed by a dictator; although  things look almost the same.  There is no question  in my view that  music is power . It  can change  the way we fuction and  see  ourselves . It can be used a  lens through  through which we see the injustice in this world.

Rev. Dr.  Ricardo Telemaque

Youth Programs Director

Bonachy@Dcncc.org

Posted by Rev. Pierre Louis Zephir | October 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

UPdate on DNCC & Q’s 4 the Network

Hey hey network–

It was PHENOM to hear about all the projects this morning!  I’ve been meaning to add to the blog for a minute, but finally hopping to it…

Our project at Dorchester Nazarene (DNCC) is going great.  So far we’ve been combining introductory music lessons (in trumpet & saxaphone) with poetry/spoken word.  We started by doing activities to build community in the group while looking at the role of music in social movements (with examples from Hip Hop in Senegal–where rappers put out electoral mix-tapes in 2000 and changed the political landscape of the country, Favela Rising (Brazil), Amandla! (South Africa), and Hip Hop in the US.  And I’m personally really excited to continue that convo next week when Hip Hop Media Lab (H2ML) will join us to talk about “Hip Hop as a Weapon.”

The DNCC youth chose to work on Youth Violence (close competitors were disproportionate School Funding and rising Costs of Living), and since then have been looking at the affects (e.g. deaths, injuries, trauma, depression, fear, prison, separated families, police escalation, lost dreams), the causes (drug trade/crime, people need money, jealousy in relationships, disrespect, presence of guns/weapons, demons/straying from God, etc.) and the deeper root causes of those causes (1. joblessness/poverty, 2. systemic/government racism, 3. people need dignity & respect in their own lives, and 4) gun companies & justice system profit from the crisis).

I wasn’t in the first training, but from looking at the materials, there were three main youth development goals for the CfC project… 1) Increase youth participation, 2) Develop youth’s skills/interests, and 3) Impact a social issue.  To me, it’s really important that the third one doesn’t get lost.  I want the youth to feel that they’ve tangibly affected the problem of Youth Violence.  I want them to feel their own power.  (To that end, we’ve been incorporating some activities around Youth Power, Youth Movements, and Adultism.)

The next thing that we did was to research groups who are explicitly working on Youth Violence in Boston (United Youth and Youth Workers, GBIO, Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Street Worker Program of BCYF, and Boston Gun Buy Back).  We developed a list of strategies that people are working on so that we could support the strategies that we like.  We’re going to incorporate all these things–Affects of Youth Violence, Causes & Root Causes of Youth Violence, and Solutions to Youth Violence–into our poetry/spoken word.

Our next huge task is to figure out what exactly the final project will sound like and look like, where we’ll present it, and how we’ll use it to target specific people or groups who can help implement the Solutions to Youth Violence that we like.

I have a few questions for the folks out there in the network…

Do you have good spoken word activities to get people writing on specific topics?

Do you have specific hip hop (or otherwise) tracks that discuss violence in a progressive way?  (e.g. Pharoahe Monch’s “Hello my name’s Mr. Bullet” or Akrobatik’s “Remind my soul”)

What ways do you suggest we get our music onto the Ipod/computer of local policy-makers?

Peace,
Dave
davidvictorjenkins@gmail.com

p.s. sorry 4 long post

Posted by David Jenkins | October 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

REMINDER!! Workshop with Toni Blackman

Tomorrow Tuesday October 28 from 9am-2.30pm, workshop with hip-hop artist Toni Blackman (www.toniblackman.com) at Cloud Place!

“Thinking on one’s feet can be a challenge, but with the right training one can acquire the confidence necessary to be a more effective communicator.  The Toni Blackman process combines the fundamentals of a public speaking workshop along with freestyle rap techniques and improvisational poetry exercises to guide participants to a new space of creativity and communication power.”

Date and time: Tuesday October 28, 9:00am-2:30pm

Location: Cloud Place, 647 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116

    

Posted by Christine L. Weinberg | October 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment 

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