For Youth Inquiry Performing Health Collective

Vital Stats

Chicago, IL

  • people helped200
  • People Doing It 13

The Problem

FYI is invested in creating comprehensive and sustainable learning opportunities for Chicago area youth. We see ourselves as conversation activators; our participatory performances engage youth in potentially difficult conversations in safe and fun spaces. FYI partners with organizations that can provide in-depth information on sexual health and health resources such as the Chicago Women's Health Center, Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health and Planned Parenthood. FYI performances focus on getting youth to ask questions they need answers to, and we are able to share those framing questions with partner organizations that have longer teaching residencies. We also sees ourselves as skill builders. Providing youth with information or access to services is only half the battle; they need to be comfortable talking to their partners, health care providers, friends or family in order to actually implement safer sex practices. We use participatory theatre performances and workshops to help youth practice having conversations, asking questions, and interrupting sexual violence. Check us out at www.foryouthinquiry.org!

Plan of Action

We see participatory theater as an ideal tool to open the door to safe conversations about seemingly unsafe topics; and as a medium for dialogue, rather than presentation. We explore the intersection between audience and performer, and move beyond the traditional relationship of audience as receiver and the performer as giver. In this way, FYI performances invite the audience to take part of the playmaking process. This happens through a combination of effective performance that captivates the audience, participatory breakouts that engage them, and improvisation that activates their voices and ideas. Through this unique and creative framework, we enable young people to investigate and critically analyze their world in a way that is critical to their sexual health and well-being. To that end, FYI offers two performances. Project US explores how youth talk about sex and where their understanding of sex comes from. Can I Hit It? explores how youth understand sexual violence and what they can do to interrupt it on a day-to-day basis.
Go
Sex Education

Related Stuff