Mosaic Youth Theatre

I first heard about Mosaic Youth Theatre earlier this year when The Mosaic Model (click the link to download this study at no charge) was realeased earlier this year. This 3-year study completed by the University of Michigan along with other partners, identified amazing results, in the form of unprecedented high school graduation rates and other forms of youth success, which has been consistently achieved through the work of Mosaic Youth Theatre. They recently held auditions for their FREE training programs, which are open to youth 11-18 from across Metro Detroit. Please click the logo below to learn more about this amazing program.

...Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit is founded on the richness of difference. Our young artists come from city and suburban schools, and a variety of social, economic, racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. Through our professional performing arts program, these young artists blend their ideas and talents and achieve excellence in their theatrical and musical performances. Yet, their success is perhaps best measured by how they excel in life. Mosaic proudly reports that more than 95% of its youth ensemble members graduate from high school and go on to college.

"Invincible", female emcee (rapper) uses her art to address Detroit's issues

Click on the above image to read this month's Metro Times article on Invincible and her remarkable work as an activist/artist. Also be sure to check out the music/documentary video for "Locusts" at the bottom of this post, which addresses the unseen and many times ugly side of urban development.

I first met Invincible back when I was attending UM-Ann Arbor, somewhere between '97 and '98. We hung out with a lot of the same crowd, went to same parties, that kind of thing and she was "flowing" (rapping) even back then. Since then, she has obviously been doing some truly AMAZING things in both the worlds of activism as well as Hip-Hop. If you think you know what Hip-Hop is, no matter whether you are a fan or a critic, think again!

Excerpt from the linked Metro Times article:
Here's the deal: Invincible is one of the best emcees in the country, as many will tell you, gender notwithstanding, though the odds are stacked against her: 1) She's a woman working a male-dominated genre 2) She's gay and 3) She's overtly political — her sympathy for the Palestinians, for instance, flies in the face of many of her Israeli family members' (and this country's) principles. Politicking in a pop world often spells fiscal failure.

She's dedicates much of her life to grass-roots activism for community change — mainly through the nonprofit group Detroit Summer — from workshops inside Michigan schools to a federal prison in California, from a juvenile center to a West Bank group tour.

ARTS ED: Opera Written by MI Children!

Please find some of the press coverage that InsideOut Literary Art Project and the Michigan Opera Theater have received for the Hanstein Elementary School's third and fourth grade students' original production of the opera The Ringer of the Moon:

Listen to Principal Bernadine Carroll and the students from Hanstein Elementary School talk about the first ever opera written by children. (Note: The link brings you to a DPS radio show, where you will find the opera segment in the middle.)http://www.wrcjfm.org/ondemand/dps/ondemand.htm

Read more about the students' original production of the opera The Ringer of the Moon in the Detroit Free Press.

ARTS ED: GR-area Students Create Poetry Ezine

The Grand Rapids Humanities Council has announced the launch of a new web venture called Through the 3rd Eye, an ezine full of poetry, commentary, and literary news and created by area students, ages 13-21, under the mentorship of Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Rodney Torreson. The site was made possible in part by a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

http://throughthe3rdeye.com/

MI Artist Uses Art to Rescue "At Risk" Youth

This documentary is great. Hector Perez has close ties to my family. Growing up in the Sunnyside neighborhood in Adrian, Hector was a young vato, or hoodlum, heading down a dangerous path and messing with herion. My father, Julio Perazza, was a counselor with the Upward Bound program at the time where he introduced Hector to the art of photography. Hector is now a very successful and inspirational artist and motivational figure in his own right, but he still remembers the difference the arts made to him during that pivotal time:

"... I was just dreaming about your father and the day I told him that I was messing with 'tecate' or Mexican heroin. He came down from Detroit to Adrian's Upward Bound. I grew up in Sunnyside ... Your father was a counselor. So he was the first person to show me his Pentax. He took the time to share his passion, so I felt special ... that moment of SLR instruction fed my curiosity about something positive rather than the tecate. Your father had a magnetic personality..."

I can't help but think that the hand my father reached out to Hector several decades ago, helped to inspire the amazing ways Hector is currently giving back to "at risk" youth :')

ARTS ED: High School for the Recording Arts

I learned about the High School for Recording Arts program at a “HipHop inside K-12 Education” session at the Americans for the Arts conference in Philadelphia, PA last month. The program has had tremendous success with many students that other schools had either failed or given up on. Many of the students were dropouts before enrolling and the program now boasts incredible retention and graduation rates. The kids get access to professional equipment to produce their own projects and learn the business of the recording industry hands-on AS LONG as they are able to keep up a certain grade point average with their regular high school classes. This program is currently ongoing in Minnesota and in the session they mentioned that another location will be opening soon in NY. We need programs like this in MI!