PRIORITY AREA: NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY
EXPLORING SAFETY THROUGH ART Safe & Sound Encourage Amani Youth to Use their Voices
Safe & Sound collaborated with the Dominican Center in helping to facilitate the Parental Adviso- ry and #Enough Plays Intergen- erational Talk Back Session. This talk back session was centered around the youth of the Ama- ni neighborhood, birthed out of the desire to allow for their opinions on the subject matter explored in the plays to be dis- cussed and dissected in a man- ner that focuses on the overall safety and empowerment of the youth. The discussion was illu- minating; there was an intergen- erational aspect that occurred organically, which in turn begot plans for more intergeneration- al conversations in the future. There were youth in attendance who provided eye-opening feed- back and simultaneously adults and elders who also chimed in on the conversation. The Parental Advisory play covered censorship, from questioning and interrogat- ing the necessity of it, to its effects on young people. The #Enough play was a series of monologues focused on gun violence, touching on every- thing from the impact of school shootings to hate crime shoot- ings and youth dying at the hands of reckless shootings.
The conversations birthed from these plays at the Talk Back were steeped in profundity and intro- spection, with the young people in attendance looking forward, offering solutions and remedies to problems with censorship and gun violence, with plans on how to curb shootings and how to have their voices amplified and empowered in all spaces. Safe & Sound staff offered a plethora of questions to stir up conversation, stoke meaning- ful debates and to probe for solutions to the many complex problems concerning the youth in the Amani neighborhood. The youth were quick to warm up and jump into the discussion, offering insightful tidbits of wis- dom and working through the questions asked to ensure that every aspect of each question was thoroughly interrogated. Out of this discussion, the topic of desensitization of young peo- ple and shootings, with exam- ples such as one youth mention- ing walking to school, hearing shooting and barely flinching at the sound of nearby gunshots. There were conversations had about censorship, including if and how current music can in-
fluence young people, for better or for worse. The youth in atten- dance were unafraid to speak up on how they felt the issues affect them, exploring everything from local stories of gun violence and how they’d been personally affected to how in enacting cen- sorship, you allow for creativity and, furthermore, creative ex- pression to be stifled. The adults in attendance posed questions and scenarios that called for critical thinking and analysis within the young peo- ple, but they surely were up to task, expressing their thoughts and ideologies on the complex subject matter in ways that were revelatory and profound. The intergenerational talkback experience went so well re- ceived that another such event is already in the works for the upcoming year. Safe & Sound also walked in the March to End Gun Violence over the summer in the Amani neighborhood.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online