news

Adobe Youth Voices

Published on July 17, 2007

By Diana Lee, Audio Produced by Anayansi Diaz-Cortes

Adobe Youth Voices provides breakthrough learning experiences using video, multimedia, digital art, web, animation, and audio tools that enable youth to explore and comment on their world.

The Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) program started in the Spring of 2006 where Adobe identified five leading non-profit media arts organizations in the nation who work closely with youth media makers to provide an environment that will engage, enhance and exhibit works by youth from marginalized communities in exploring and commenting on their world using Adobe's multimedia tools. As a collaborating partner of AYV, Arts Engine plays an active role in providing the resources necessary to ensure the voices that result from AYV are not only produced but that there is an audience, an outlet and a way to engage and inspire the public beyond the immediate Adobe Youth Voice community. Since the launch of AYV, Arts Engine has continued to provide youth media makers with valuable tools on how to effectively engage their audiences. From the onset, Arts Engine provided practical and easy to follow guidelines and instructions on audience building, outreach and distribution strategies as well as ways of presenting and showcasing the completed works made by AYV youth. The young people participating in the AYV program understand that their projects, when completed, will reach an audience beyond their friends, families and schools. They know that the audience and the impact will be global.

Students from AYV New York site wait in anticipation for the start of media showcase.

As the youth in each site and city finish their projects, Arts Engine, with our partners at Listen Up!, Educational Video Center, What Kids Can Do, and iEarn, organized a culminating showcase to celebrate the works produced by New York City AYV sites. It was with anticipation and excitement that we held this culminating event on Monday, June 11 at Listen Up!'s offices. The sites that presented projects included Bronx Leadership Academy II, Bronx Satellite Academy, The School for Legal Studies, and Westside Collaborative Middle School. Students from each site came with their peers, parents, teachers and media mentors to showcase the works that they have spent so much time creating. The projects ranged from personal issues such as health and weight, teenage relationships, handling pressure and stress, metal detectors in schools; to larger issues such as child soldiers, drug use and hip hop, laws and rules to live by.

The students from Westside Collaborative produced 4 projects:

WEIGHT OF THE WORLD: The film explores how students deal with weight issues in schools and around their peers. Through the making of the film students come to have a deeper understanding of how the issue of weight is explored in our society, as well as the discrimination that overweight people have to deal with.

TEENAGE RELATIONSHIPS: This film looks at the dynamics of teenage relationships as it applies to dating, love and sex. Man-on-the-street interviews mixed with interviews with teachers and their peers provide insight into the complex feelings and attitudes people have towards teenagers in relationships.

THE PRESSURE IS ON!: As teenagers navigate school, family life, social life and various other outside factors, this project takes a look at how teenagers can effectively deal with peer pressures in their environments. Some man-on-the-street interviews and interviews with adults weave together ideas about coping with peer pressure.

RACE IN SCHOOLS: This project explores what race means to students. In the United States, race is a loaded topic and as students get older and become more aware of race politics, they explore how race affects the way they interact and treat others.

The students from The School of Legal Studies produced 2 projects:

Two of the youth filmmakers from the film LAWS OF LIFE introduce their project to the audience.

METAL DETECTORS IN SCHOOLS: Over the years many New York City public schools have installed metal detectors. How do these metal detectors affect students psychologically and do metal detectors really prevent or deter violence in schools? This project attempts to explore the politics and affects of metal detectors in schools.

LAWS OF LIFE: In this project students discuss the laws and values they live by. Interviews with teachers, peers and counselors provide insight into the value systems we live by/in. Additionally students incorporate societal and governmental laws and values as well as personal and familial laws and values.

The students from Bronx Satellite Academy produced 2 projects:

CHILD SOLDIERS: Students from Bronx Satellite look at the horrifying realities of child soldiers in Africa and explore the reasoning and mindset behind this brutal practice.

HIP-HOP & DRUG USE: Music and the media have huge influences on today's youth. In this project, young people examine and critique the influence hip-hop has on drug use and explore whether the hip hop culture glamorizes and condones drug use. Students use images and music videos to showcase and present some interesting examples.

In addition to videos, students at Bronx Leadership Academy II embarked on a different kind of audio/visual project. With the support and guidance from What Kids Can Do students developed 3 audio diaries:

WHO SAYS WHO'S SMART: Students uncover the meaning of "smart" and look at book smart versus street smart.

WHAT'S AMERICAN: The project looks at what makes us an American and how do we identify who is American and who isn't?

AMERICAN FAMILIES: As immigrants or children of immigrant parents, students delve deeper into their roots and talk about what makes up their families.

This journey will result in a publication that they are writing and designing. WKCD's Next Generation Press will publish the book in the fall of 2007.

At the end of the showcase, we opened the floor up for a brief Q&A session where students from different schools had the opportunity to ask their peers questions like: how topics were decided; the technical difficulties that they encountered during productions; what they hope to get out of making and showing the projects. It was a lively dialogue that ended with a light reception and more discussion of the projects on a more intimate level.

The crowd from the AYV culminating showcase in NY wait with excitement for the show to start.

All projects from this culminating event are being fine-tuned and more editing, sound sweetening and color correction will make the final projects stronger. These videos, along with works from London, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Noida and Bangalore, will all be considered for inclusion in the culminating Year One Adobe Youth Voices DVD as well as streaming on MediaRights.org. Check back in the coming months for highlights and streaming content, in the mean time, congratulations to all the students who participated in Year One of the Adobe Youth Voices program. And thanks to all of our partners and to Adobe for your commitment in youth media!