Youth-led Live Media Arts Projects (LAMP) through Detroit Summer

This organization called Detroit Summer puts on youth-led summer programs which they call Live Media Arts Projects or LAMP summer programs:



2006 LAMP summer program "produced the amazing Rising Up From the Ashes: Chronicles of a Dropout Hip Hop Audio Documentary. Since the completion of that CD project we have developed workshops, gone on tour, conducted a city-wide survey and started an all-ages bi-monthly hip hop event called DTENSION. This has all been a part of a campaign to transform education in Detroit through youth-led creativity and critical thinking."

2008 LAMP summer program "took the campaign one step further, by creating videos inspired by some of the themes raised in the original LAMP CD. But instead of investigate the root problems leading people to drop-out, these videos focus in on solutions. These aren't just pie-in-the-sky solutions we dreamed up. We've developed them over the past two years of in-depth participatory research with youth in the city. We've also researched other places where these types of solutions have been implemented successfully. The 3 themes of the videos are: 'Cooperative Economics', 'Alternatives to Criminalization' and 'Respect'. Based on the work we've done, we really believe these models, if applied in our schools here in Detroit, would reduce the drop-out rate and make school a place where people actually wanted to come."