Youth Arts and Music Festival: Notes of the Neighborhood

Vital Stats

Daniel Z

Alameda, CA

  • people helped150
  • People Doing It 22

The Problem

The Community: The youth of the San Francisco East Bay area face many social and environmental problems in their lives; these include family problems, poverty, discrimination, violence, crime and other social problems around them. This is particularly true for youth of underrepresented populations. In the West End of Alameda, the community in which our project group is working, there have been significant increases in youth population, diversity, and economic need over the past few years. Inequities between Alameda’s West End (where the Navy strongly affected neighborhood development) and the East End (dominated by older, affluent neighborhoods) have increased, especially with respect to youth services. At Bay Area School of Enterprise (BASE), the first youth-initiated charter high school in the country and located in West Alameda, the school serves 125 culturally, ethnically, and academically diverse youth with 95% being youth of color; 10% of the youth have identified learning disabilities , 71.5% of youth qualify for free or reduced lunch, 34% are English Language Learners, 54% come from single-parent families, 35% are at risk of failing the California High School Exit Exam, 11% are on probation with the county, and over 75% would be the first in their family to attend college. In addition, over 90% of youth are entering below grade level based on STAR assessment data and transcript review. The Problem: The problem is that in our local community, there is a lack of opportunities for youth artistic expression. We don’t have many available spaces through which to channel our negative feelings into something positive and beautiful. Sometimes our forms of expression are not accepted by the community and we are portrayed negatively rather than admired and recognized. Because many youth don’t find this space in schools where budgets are constantly cut short, and art and music programs are the first to go, Alternatives in Action tries to fill in those gaps through their after school programs. One of the sites where this occurs is at the Bay Area School of Enterprise.If the youth were given more opportunities to turn their thoughts and feelings into art and music and people admired and respected them for it, than their lives would be more positive and fulfilling. The youth of Alternatives in Action are trying to provide a space for West Alameda and Oakland youth to be able to do this.

Plan of Action

The Youth Arts and Music Festival is entirely youth-led. We are a group of 20 youth who are participating in the preparation and realization of this event. We are all a part of Alternatives in Action’s after school programs who have been working on this project for 5 hours per week. In addition to this event benefiting the larger community, this event helps us build skills and knowledge in critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and event planning (plan, implement, and evaluation). The first step we took was to organize the youth into planning committees of 3-4 youth each that are responsible for one specific aspect of the planning process. These committees include the steering committee, which is the lead committee. We also formed a food committee, budget committee, advertisement committee, arts committee, and the tech committee. Each committee is responsible for creating a list of supplies and actions that are needed to meet their goals of allocating those supplies. The budget committee will collaborate with each committee to develop a budget and they will also be responsible for tracking donors and other funders. We took inventory of items we already have and identified the supplies we’ll need. On February 22, 2011 we had a panel presentation for our Alternatives in Action stakeholders (this included Program Directors, funders, Board of Directors, students, and Adult Coaches) during which we presented our proposal for this project and received feedback and approval to continue forward with our planning. Each committee will proceed with allocating all materials and will report to the steering committee. The steering committee will be taking the lead in preparing the event and taking on duties such as submitting permits to the city to block off the street and requesting permission from residents by writing them a letter explaining our event and inviting them to attend. In the event that the City does not grant us the permit, we have received permission to hold the event on campus in our Community Room. Each committee will begin the process of getting the materials ready for the event and with the help of staff members we will begin purchasing supplies and making reservations. The next important thing will be to get the word out. The advertisement committee has designed a flyer that will represent the theme for this event and begin distributing and letting our community know of our Youth Arts and Music Festival. The initial impact so far has been limited primarily to inspiring the action of our planning group, and the enthusiasm in our stakeholders and school community to support this project. In the next weeks we will begin our advertising and community outreach campaign, and envision the enthusiasm will spread. Our target is to reach 150 local youth and community members who attend this event, and whose experience is reflective of the goals we established above.
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