(bright music) - Hello everyone and welcome to the WKAR Studios.

My name is Devon Akmon and I'm the director of the MSU Museum and Science Gallery.

We are so excited to have you with us today for the Smithsonian's National Youth Summit on Gender Equity.

The MSU Museum was honored to be selected as one of 12 affiliates from the Smithsonian, from across the nation to produce a regional youth summit in conjunction with the National Youth Summit.

There are thousands of students just like you, who are meeting today to have conversations, examining issues of gender, bias, and equity.

Each year, the National Youth Summit directly takes on issues that are complex and deeply meaningful, both for individual people and the nation as a whole.

Engaging with these topics require thoughtfulness, compassion, critical thinking, and respect for others.

This year is no different.

The summit is a special experience in which young people from diverse geographies, ethnicities, races, genders, classes, and lived experiences come together in discussion about pressing issues that have faced our nation past and present.

Anchored by history this event asks and challenges teenagers and young adults to confront issues of power and privilege, equity and justice and continuity and change.

Organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, in partnership with Smithsonian affiliations, this year's National Youth Summit on gender equity runs from September 21st today through October 12th.

Central questions posed during the summit include, how is gender equity shaped by race, ethnicity and class?

How can gender expectations shape what we think and do for fun?

What strategies can we use to identify gender inequities and disrupt gender bias?

And forth, how can sharing culture create welcoming and equitable spaces for people across the gender spectrum?

For those of you watching today on our live stream, please know that teachers may register their classrooms for webcast and access free supplementary educational materials for all ages at americanhistory.si.edu/nys.

Again, americanhistory.si.edu/nys.

Teachers may also facilitate their own youth summits any time today through October 12th using learning resources and videos provided free to registered educators.

Now, we wanna thank our partners for helping us bring today's event to MSU.

They include the MSU Broad Art Museum, WKAR and MSU Science Gallery.

In fact, today's program is inspired by two exhibitions taking place on campus.

This includes Free Your Mind: Art and Incarceration in Michigan, which is on display at the Broad Art Museum until December 12th.

Making art can be a transformative experience.

It helps us to confront and address some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Art has the power to shift the way we see and understand the world around us and the worlds within us.

Free Your Mind: Art and Incarceration in Michigan invites us to consider the qualities of art while also grappling with carceral system and the many ways it affects the lives of all of us.

Additionally, Science Gallery is presenting an exhibition called Tracked and Traced at the MSU Museum through December 11.

This exhibition explores the myriad ways surveillance impacts society and how we can work to provide a more ethical and equitable practice of seeing and being seen.

Please be sure to visit both exhibitions during the weeks to come.

Today, we will introduce and host two interactive panel discussions with experts, scholars, arts practitioners and community activists.

Our first panel explore how gender equity is shaped by race, ethnicity and class.

And our second panel will explore the ways in which the arts can be used as a means for self-expression and youth empowerment.

But before we get started, I have a few quick housekeeping notes for us.

First, thank you to WKAR for hosting today's event and providing the footage for their program "BackStage Pass".

If you wanna see more episodes they're available at the website, wkar.org.

Now, we are alive in person here in Studio A and as you can see from the cameras around the studios, we're also live streaming today's event to an online audience.

Again, welcome to those of you joining us online.

For those in the studio, please remember to keep your mask on at all times while covering your nose and mouth.

If you need to stand up or leave the studio for any reason during the production, please use the door in the back of the studio.

Bathrooms are located just outside the studio, down the hallway.

Also, please place all electronic devices on silent or airplane mode and no flash photography.

These cameras do not like flashes.

Now, it is my pleasure to introduce our first panel today, How Gender Equity is Shaped by Race, Ethnicity and Class.

You will have the opportunity to ask a few questions.

So be thinking of those questions and when it is time, please form a line and use the microphones in the aisle.

We also encourage questions online.

Now, our moderator today is Susi Elkins.

Susi is general manager of WKAR public media and director of broadcasting for the college of communication, arts and sciences here at MSU.

WKAR is home to the public radio like NPR in classical music and public television like PBS Kids, Masterpiece, NOVA, and various documentaries and educational content for the Michigan capital region.

Welcome Susi.

- [Susi] Thank you.

- Our panelists today include Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown and Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews.

Dr. Ruth Nicole, is MSU Foundations professor and chairperson of the Department of African-American Art and African Studies and founder of Saving Our Lives, Hearing Our Truths also known as SOLHOT.

Research-based community of practice to better understand how power and identity influenced the lives of Black girls.

Welcome Ruth Nicole.

And our next panelist is Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews.

Dr. Andrews is the chairperson for the department of teacher education in the MSU College of Education and professor of race, culture, and equity.

Her research is broadly focused on racial justice and educational equity.

She examines issues of racial justice in P-12 learning contexts and on college campuses, urban teacher preparation, and identity development along with critical race practices with K through 12 educators.

Welcome Dorinda.

And now, take it away Susi.

- Thank you, Devon.

Welcome everybody to Studio A, here in WKAR and I'm really pleased to welcome Dorinda and Ruth Nicole.

We're so happy to have you both here with us today.

I can't wait to start our conversation.

And so to kick things off, I do have a first question for you.

Can you please introduce yourselves and tell us how, tell us a story about how you first became interested in girlhood.

Ruth Nicole, would you like to start?

- Sure.

I'll start.

By way of introduction, I want to say my name is Ruth Nicole Brown, and I am founder of Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truth, which I continue to co organize with many wonderful individuals across the U.S.

In terms of further information about who I am, it's important for folks to know, I think where I grew up is very important to me.

I was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois, and raised in Park Forest.

That community grew me up and taught me so many of the important values that I have since followed throughout my education and look forward to teaching students here at MSU.

I've also was a first generation college student.

I attended the University of Illinois for undergrad, University of Michigan Ann Arbor for grad, and then return back to my alma mater for a post-doc.

I was also a professor at the University of Illinois for 15 years prior to joining the faculty at MSU.

It is important, I think for everyone to know that what brought me here was the new department of African and African Studies.

I'm so excited to be chairperson, and there are many wonderful faculty and invite students to check out the classes in AAAS.

In terms of my interest in girlhood, where I grew up identified as a girl and being a girl was very important in our household.

My mom encouraged me in all things.

She certainly challenged very restrictive or binary ideas about what gender meant and just encouraged me to follow my dreams, follow my passions.

We share my mother and I, a love of learning, a love of reading.

And I personally enjoy being a girl playing outside in my neighborhood.

A neighborhood playing outdoors was an exciting pastime.

Where I grew up we had to be in before the street lights came on, but before then we enjoy playing games, basketball and meeting at the courts and just enjoying a vibrant social life.

And so I always knew that to be a Black girl was something that was powerful to be appreciated and valued.

In my academic research, I became interested in the ways that Black girls shape politics and political consciousness.

I was trained as a political science.

When I reviewed the literature in my discipline.

I noticed that when children were acknowledged, particularly for their political ideas, it was always what the system taught them, not how Black girls themselves often changed, challenged the system and resisted it.

And so in terms of my work, I became interested in girl empowerment programming, and it was a big push in the '90s for foundations to give out money for nonprofits to take interest, particularly in girls specific programs and initiatives.

And in my study of those programs, it was striking to me that many of the same criteria that those programs professed to teach and promote like coming to voice and leadership skills were actually when expressed by Black girls to their detriment.

So they were often policed, punished and surveillance for the very same skills exercise in them that the program's professed to promote.

So when exercise their voice, when they made their choices clear, when they express their preferences and desires, they were often punished in ways that others weren't.

And for me, I knew that there ought to be a space where Black girls could be, be themselves and fully develop who they want it to be, who they are, and as well as sort of exercise their own authority.

And so from that, I created Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths and our mission from the very beginning has been to celebrate Black girlhood in all of our complexity.

- What an incredible background you have and how lucky we are to have you here on campus at Michigan state.

Thank you for choosing us to share all of your expertise.

And I can't wait to learn more from you today.

And I think we're all excited to hear what you have to share about your research and your work.

So thank you so much.

- Thank you.

And how about you Dorinda, could you introduce yourself and share with us a story about how you became interested in girlhood?

- Yeah, sure.

So again, I'm Dorinda Carter Andrews and a chairperson for the Department of Teacher Education.

I am a Southern girl by upbringing.

I grew up in Decatur, Georgia.

My parents grew up in the Jim Crow South.

And so the question of how I became interested in girlhood is an interesting question because I feel girlhood is who I've always been.

I grew up in a house with two other sisters, so my parents raised three girls.

And our mom was very much a strong role model for us.

In that time, she was a community college instructor, but she had started out teaching in her first job in Arkansas.

And there were not a lot of opportunities at that time.

Arkansas was her home, a little rural town there, but there were not a lot of opportunities for women to advance and especially not Black women.

And so unintentionally, there are ways in which she socialized us in the house, through her conversation with my dad, through her moves with her colleagues about the ways that gender inequity was playing out in her own life.

And so her narrative to us was to always be strong, that your girlhood your womanhood is not something negative.

We never thought of ourselves as being unable to do the same or more than people who were not girls.

And so I say all of that because I then entered professions.

I mean, my undergraduate degree is in industrial and systems engineering.

That's not a field that was dominated or that is still dominated by girls and women, right.

It's in the STEM area.

So my interest in girlhood, I think originated through the socialization in my home, but then as I traveled through the educational system and experienced explicit marginalization based on my interests, my talents, my giftings, it illuminated in me this fire to then want to now as an academic study and lift up Black girls voices around the ways in which their genius is undermined, rendered invisible, and marginalized in school systems, misunderstood.

And now as a mother of three Black daughters, I think the interesting girlhood is even more prominent, not from just a research perspective, but from a mothering perspective.

And so I'm able to watch my daughter's experience girlhood in both similar ways that I did, but also in these nuanced ways because their contexts are not the same as mine.

So in my own research, I really use qualitative methodologies to learn with and from Black girls grades 3 to 12, and even into college and graduate school about how they experienced the world in racialized and gendered and classed ways, and not just to lift up those struggles, but then to have them help us better understand how they can really enact their own freedom, how they can freedom dream in spaces that actually thwart that kind of liberation.

- It sounds like you both have had some really strong female role models in your lives, which has helped you and shape the lens of your expectation and perhaps disappointment in moving into the professional world and your research.

But can you talk a little bit more about other elders that you've invited into this space and how you've been inspired by them as well?

- Sure, do you want to pass the... We brought some pictures here.

This notion of inviting elders into the space, I think is significant for me in that there're those women who came before me and I stand on the shoulders of giants, both in my family, but in the world.

And so even as we gather here today and meet today, I thought I'd invite in an elder who has transitioned on, Dorothy Height.

And I have a picture of Dorothy Height here, and I'm gonna read this quote.

The reason I am inviting Dorothy Height into the space is because this quote, when she lifted this up years ago, every time I read it, it resonates with my own personhood.

And she said, "I want to be remembered as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom.

I want to be remembered as one who tried."

And I really believe in my own life, that's what I want people to say about Dorinda Carter Andrews, that I worked for justice, that I worked for equity across, you know, various social identity markers, but particularly race and gender, and that I tried.

And that's what I want girls, girls of color to be doing in their own lives.

And so I invite Dorothy Height into this space with us this afternoon.

And I'll just share a couple of nuggets about who she was for those who don't know her.

Dorothy Heights was a civil rights icon in her own right.

She was on the front lines in civil rights, even amidst gender discrimination.

And people often don't talk about the gender discrimination that was occurring in the civil rights movement.

I think that intersection between race and gender is so important, right?

The assumption that people of the same race were all like-minded in how the work got done, but there were gender inequities, there was silencing of voices.

Dorothy Height was a speaker at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, back in 1963.

She graduated from New York University where she received a bachelor's in education and a master's in psychology.

So that also resonates with me.

She was an educator, I'm an educator.

She was a social worker in Harlem, New York.

And she was very active in the National Council of Negro Women.

In fact, she met Mary McLeod Bethune.

I mean, that's amazing to me.

And that's how she got excited about the National Council of Negro Women.

I actually had the opportunity, Dorothy Height lived to be 98.

She passed in 2010, but I had the opportunity to sit at her feet when I was a graduate student at Harvard in the early 2000s.

So you can imagine she was in her nineties then and still giving public talks.

And so I invite her into this space because she has inspired me and continues to in so many ways.

- That's beautiful.

Thanks so much for sharing that.

That's very inspiring.

How about you, Ruth Nicole.

- I'm grateful for the opportunity to call a few names of elders that I would like to invite in the space.

I brought a book.

One is the "Selected Poems" of Gwendolyn Brooks and Gwendolyn Brooks is one of my most favorite poets.

I would also say too that Gwendolyn Brooks spent a lot of time with young people.

It's amazing to me, her touring schedule all the visits that she took to share time, create space, to talk about creativity, to create art with young people.

But as she was saying, it wasn't always just about the poetry.

It was about being in dialogue and being in conversation.

And so I aspire to have such a calendar field with opportunities to dialogue with young people as Gwendolyn Brooks did, as much as I enjoy the poetic legacy that she has left us with and continues to guide the practice of SOLHOT.

I also brought with me a book called "Sister Love" and it is the Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker" and both poets writers.

And I do want to come back to in a second, this idea of the significance importance, social political and otherwise of friendship and love between Black women.

That also echoes this image that I brought of Toni Morrison and Angela Davis.

Angela Davis is still with us, but this idea of them together, Pat Parker and Audrey Lorde together informs my work.

We mentioned our mothers and the legacy in which we stand.

And one of the things that I know for sure, and we activate in SOLHOT is the power and potential of Black women girls in films coming together.

That is certainly something that I witnessed with my mom.

My mom kept a group of close friends and they would laugh and discuss their problems and just get together.

And I knew that when Black women get together, we will say sometimes there's a problem for the patriarchy.

Most of the time, even if it was a good gathering.

And so at SOLHOT we also operate out of this understanding of the relationships between Black women, Black femmes, and non binary geniuses in terms of a different way of relating to each other that we often have to work through inter-personally that we have to have a political education about the ways in which systems of marginalization impact meeting heart-to-heart, face-to-face, and eye-to-eye, and we through that, do that through this particular relationship called home girling.

And I know that I'm in a tradition when I see Angela Davis and Tony Morrison in some real serious conversation as home girls.

I know that they're plotting a revolution.

I know that sometimes it can be expressed through letters to sisters in the way that Pat Parker and Audrey Lorde wrote to each other.

Also know that that is one way that girls in middle school and beyond begin to in act develop their own political consciousness, because it is really important work to one, find your people and to know who your people are.

Certainly when you encounter problems, often these systemic problems are too big to go at alone.

So you gotta have some home girls who have your back is really important to know who is a good friend, somebody who is willing to celebrate with you, laugh long, share a meal, and encourage you to be the best person that you want to be.

And also someone who's down to help you solve big problems that are facing so many of us.

And yeah, you can't go at it alone.

Sister love is so important to political movement and deliberation.

I deeply believe that and know that to be the case.

- Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about what inspires you and it strikes me how creative this work is and how interwoven it is with both the scientific aspect of your research in systems, but then also the cultural creativity.

And that's really inspiring to me.

And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about your work in these areas on campus.

You're both professors, you're both chairpersons.

Can you talk a little bit more about how you weave these thoughts and these approaches to your work with students on campus?

- Yeah, I think I'd add, I was thinking a lot about some of the pieces that Ruth Nicole was talking about.

And in my work as a scholar and a leader, working with students on campus, I really take up this notion of other mothering.

I think when Black women lead there's some aspect along a continuum of nurturing, whatever that looks like for that Black woman leader.

And this concept of other mothering is really salient for me, the ways in which I lift up critically love, serve as a critical friend to students and colleagues, right.

But then also challenge and resist.

And also allow people to both excavate and be affirmed in the identities that they hold dear.

I think that's really important in a society that pushes us constantly to conform, to exist in binaries in constraints.

And so I see myself both as a scholar, a practitioner, another mother, right.

As needing to engage in that necessary work.

So that girls across the gender spectrum or girls and those who are non-binary and femmes as well feel like they have the language to resist, to love, to be critical friends to one another, and to transform.

- Thank you.

How about you and your work, Ruth Nicole.

- In my work here, again, part of what called me to take up the position of chairperson of AAAS was the mission and vision of the department.

As we recently defined it, we are an African-American and African Studies department that centralizes, specializes, focuses on Black feminisms, Black sexualities, and Black gender studies.

I see that as a visionary approach to Black studies, and I'm so encouraged in the work, along with the faculty there, we are building this thing together and we've created exciting courses.

And I just look forward to creating extra co-curricular experiences that do much of what we will be discussing today, that engages the public, that makes social change, that embodies a greater justice than we currently know.

And that is my work here at MSU.

As a professor, researcher, artist, writer, my entire career has been dedicated to creating knowledge and making art with Black girls about Black girlhood.

Actually, if I could, my first book titled, "Black Girlhood Celebration".

And if I could just read a small part, I think it perfectly addresses your question.

- Please.

And this is again, the first book that I wrote in 2006, but as I say it like, I'm staying with this question for as long as I'll be a researcher.

"My purpose for writing this book is to share some of my most personal and political motivations for working with Black girls in community spaces, a conversation made necessary because I believe we lack a language that accurately describes what it means to work with Black girls in ways that is not about controlling their bodies and or producing White middle-class girls subjectivities.

This is my attempt to maybe not create the language, but start the dialogue of a way to be new about Black girlhood.

SOLHOT is not about etiquette training, managing girls' behavior, punishing who they are, telling them who they should be, or keeping them busy.

Nor is SOLHOT a free for all where anything and everything goes.

How we walk this talk is at the heart of the analysis presented in the book.

I aim to create a dialogue that emerges from my work with Black girls in SOLHOT."

and part of what I want to invite the teachers who may be also listening is, encouraging gender equity by flipping the script and in SOLHOT what we call changing the set design, where typically the idea is it's always the folks who are older or those perhaps with the most formally recognize aspects of privilege imparting information to younger people.

In SOLHOT that dialogue, the dialectic is valued and practice in as many ways as we can imagine, where we trust Black girls to know what they need and what they want for their own lives.

And we can be in dialogue together in sisterhood and love and homegirl relationships to bring about the changes that we know is needed for that to, as we say, widen the cipher, or expand more possibilities for Black girls to share their truths.

- This is such an important conversation and we did a little work with you on SOLHOT.

And I know you've worked on filmmaking around that, and it's just really incredibly important.

And I know you want to make this a little bit more interactive and so I'm wondering now, if you'd like to transition into that part of the panel and we have folks watching on the live stream and folks in the studio here.

And so I was just wondering if you would like to kick off the interactive piece now.

- [Dorinda] Yeah.

- [Ruth] Sure.

Well, what we hope to do today is to share one activity that we always do on SOLHOT, and thank you for asking us to share a little bit about who we are in our introductions, but as a way to widen the cipher, and to practice what we've been talking about, we wanted to have introductions and to know who you are and to hear you call your own name and the way that we do that in SOLHOT again, to get beyond appearances and how folks see us is to do this exercise called, "Just Because", and it is a prompt and I'll read it out loud.

And those of you in the audience, if you have your slips that you can find on your seat, you'll also find this particular prompt.

And I invite you all to complete it as we go along.

The prompt reads, "Just because I," and it's a blank and you can complete that sentence.

"doesn't mean that I", blank.

You can complete that sentence.

"My name is," and you feel that in with your name or who you prefer to be called in this space.

And my prompt says, "and my genius is".

Some of you may have a different last line that says, "and we are."

- And for those of you who are online, we invite you to take some time to experience this with us as well.

And wherever you are to just take some reflection time to answer those prompts.

- So we're going to take a minute to complete it ourselves.

Let's do it!

(paper rustling) (pen scratching) - Maybe about one more minute.

(paper rustling) (Ruth and Dorinda conversing faintly) So as you wrap up your thoughts, we'd like to invite those of you who are sitting in the audience.

If you'd like to share with us how you ended those phrases to maybe make your way to a mic so that you can share that with us.

We also would invite those of you who are online to utilize the chat to share with one another in that community.

So we'll pause to allow folks to either enter this mic to your right or that one to your left.

- It'd be great to hear from at least one person as we get started, I'll feel free.

I'll share my "Just Because".

I wrote, "Just because I am a teacher doesn't mean that I am not also a student.

My name is Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown.

And my genius is collective."

- I'll share mine as well.

I said, "Just because I am a professor doesn't mean I don't know how to have fun.

(all laughing) My name is Dorinda, the third Dorinda in my family and my genius is ideation."

Oh, we have someone please.

- So mine is, "Just because I sometimes choose to go at it alone doesn't mean I don't recognize how many others are on the journey with me.

My name is Natasha T. Miller, and my genius is rooted in empathy and community."

- Thank you, Natasha.

Someone else.

- I'll share.

(Ruth and Dorinda laughing) - Great!

Susi.

- "Just because I'm a parent, doesn't mean I have all the answers.

My name is Susanne Elkins, and I invite you to help."

(Susi laughs) And I could have gone a lot of different directions on that.

And, but I think some of us feel pressure as a parent to always know exactly what to do.

And I often feel like I have no idea what to do.

(all laughing) This is an interesting exercise to go through.

Do we have others who want to share?

Oh, we do.

- Yeah.

- So, "Just because I'm part of the Pushout statistics doesn't mean that I cannot pursue my dreams of being a scholar, writer.

My name is Stephany Bravo and my genius is dreaming, building and community."

- Thank you, Stephany.

- Yeah.

Thanks for that.

- Someone else?

We have someone making their way.

- I take time off from my, yeah.

So, "Just because I'm White, male, and old doesn't mean that I don't long for liberation and social and gender equity in the end of oppressive practices of all kinds.

My name is Mark Sullivan and my genius is responding to and making art with sound and images."

- Thank you, Mark.

- Thanks for that, Mark.

- Yeah.

- Great.

Thank you all for participating.

We find that exercise by way of introduction, useful for building community, getting past appearances and also allowing folks to speak their names in their own voice and to be seen and heard by how they want to be seen in heard.

Trying to just do work that chips away at the sort of binary static understandings of who we are, who we may be together.

Well, thank you all for sharing those.

- You know, Ruth Nicole.

I just would like to say, thank you for bringing that activity to this space.

And as a former K-12 teacher, I'm thinking about how something just this simple, right, can build community in a classroom.

It can invite inclusivity, diverse voices.

And as you said, for people to, for students to name themselves, particularly girls, and to really strengthen that teacher-student relationship without doing a lot of hard work to do that.

So I really appreciate the practicality of this exercise for K-12 teaching and learning.

- You're welcome.

- Have you found that there's some reluctance at first or is it, have you found that it's a great icebreaker way to get to know folks right off of that.

- In SOLHOT we've been doing this, this "Just Because" we started first day or SOLHOT in 2006, and we're still doing it.

Haven't found any reluctance what I can say that has been amazing to me for doing, "Just Because" that longest, like we still have things to share with each other, there so much more that we don't know than we do that we still find this a very generative exercise and practice 15 years later, I would also say what's pretty amazing is to note some similarities in across different geographic locales.

So when I'm used to being in communication and practice with Black girls, and I can tell you some of the more popular, "Just Becauses" no matter where we are again in the U.S. we get familiar ones.

Like, "Just because I'm quiet doesn't mean I don't have anything to say."

that's a popular "Just Because".

We often get, "Just because I'm bi or queer or not straight doesn't mean that I liked you."

(all laughing) It's also like a gentle call-out.

I love that one when we get that one.

We also get, "Just because I'm loud, doesn't mean that a stereotype."

that is a popular one that we get.

So those are just a few and I tend to sort of note the differences no matter where we are.

They're sort of all these dynamics that are relevant to again, across different geographic locales, different age group sometimes.

That is really interesting to know.

- I think we have just a couple more minutes and I was just wanting to ask you both how the work has changed even over the past, maybe five to 10 years you've been studying and working in this space for a long time, but it feels as if there's change happening maybe largely in part to your work.

And so does it feel different to you in terms of the students that you're working with going back to 2006, do you sense change or how does the environment feel to you over the past 10 years?

- I think that's a great question.

You know, for me, I feel like when I came to MSU, I mean, I came here in 2005, right?

And I think about the undergrads that I was teaching at that time and the kind of gendered, raced, classed values and beliefs that they held.

And the ways in which the kinds of courses I teach really are aimed at debunking those and deconstructing those.

And I would say that over the last 16 years, many of bowls remain, right.

But I do find that students, particularly Black girls and other girls of color, right.

Now I'm talking about in the college space are in a lot of ways more in tune with knowing who they are, right?

It's the structures and policies that smother and suppress, suppress those identities, but they are much more in tune than say when I was growing up.

I do think that we've made gains in girls' ability, across racial-ethnic groups, social-class groups, gender groups, to be able to, as Ruth Nicole was saying, be in community as friends and talk about their girlhood and the various ways they embody it, perform it, et cetera.

That was not available to me as a child, as a young girl growing up in the '70s, the '80s, early '90s.

So have there been some strides?

Yes.

Kind of societaly and in the ways that girls are able to, I think be in community with one another around the identity spectrum.

I think in the scholarship, in the literature, and I'd be interested in Ruth Nicole's thoughts here as well.

I didn't start out in girlhood studies, right.

I kind of came to that.

And so I feel like there's still a lot of research, even theorizing that needs to happen in the literature, in this field that's still evolving.

But I think and in large part, I think the field is much more salient with work around Black girlhood identities.

But we have to think about Latinx girls, right.

Girls in the native and indigenous communities, Asian American.

So there's just so much expansion that there's room for.

And I'm excited about not how, you know, my generation can do all of that work, but that the girls coming up can be contributors, creators of what we know as theory and practice in girlhood studies.

- Yep, that was great.

I would just echo that.

I mean, starting in 2006, I remember when the call for SOLHOT and we would take markers and make poster boards and put up signs in public schools like we're doing SOLHOT, SOLHOT meets Thursday.

SOLHOT is about the celebration and for the celebration of Black girlhood.

And we got a lot of questions.

Why Black girls in 2006, I mean like, why do they need a space of their own doesn't this group have more issues or more problems than Black girls.

And it felt in many particularly public schools, very politically charged to even make the call for a space that was for Black girls.

And what I do know is when they showed up, they would confirm it and they would say, "Wow!

A space just for us?"

I didn't know that was possible.

I didn't know what's possible here in my school.

I didn't know someone beyond myself wanted that.

So we addressed that a lot in 2006.

And I do know that times have changed and especially thankful to a kind of political and public consciousness, particularly around Black girlhood with hashtags, with different movements organizations, where now we don't get so much, you know, why Black girls that has been affirmed, but still not enough.

Still so much a problem where that space was not created until SOLHOT arrived, right.

You know, so that indicates to me that there's still so much more work to do, even amongst the acceptance rhetorically or socially or politically, there still very little space for Black girls to gather.

And when we do get to gather, there's still too many of the same problems, again, across geography, across differences to be confronted.

So I guess, and know about...

There are still Black girls who say, "How come they can wear leggings or shorts and Black girls can't in our school."

Sort of spoken or unspoken ways in which they are continually oppressed and marginalized while attempting to get an education.

And so I also will say, too, what has remained steady, as you said, is the genius of Black girls themselves.

They come the SOLHOT ready.

They come with the theories.

I mean, one of the things that I enjoy and that we make clear at SOLHOT is that Black girlhood is also a political identity.

And so at the door, Black girls show up with their friends, their best friends, their cousins, their little brothers.

And so right there, they're negotiating and telling us what an inclusive space is.

It may come to us, "Can my little brother come the SOLHOT?"

What if this is for Black girls, what do you all think?

Well, yeah, my brother got to come.

Okay.

You know, or as they negotiate, who comes with them, this is my best friend, she is not Black, but she still should be in this space.

And they make the case.

They're doing some really intensive work around inclusivity that we have not yet begun to catch up with.

And it is in a relationship that is founded in a particular kind of intimacy, sometimes caretaking.

We know Black girls do a lot of caretaking in their families.

That's the issue of equity.

And sometimes out of care through friendship, like, I'm already past why a squad is necessary, but already have a squad.

And if we're doing a collective thing, then everybody gotta be here, right.

You know?

Right.

And so that's the space that we're creating.

In terms of scholarship, again, my post-doctoral study was a very important time to me because I had to unlearn a lot of the disciplinary training that I received in my PhD program as a political scientist, I did not want even a disciplinary concept to colonize Black girls or ideas after working with Black girls for so long.

I knew that anything that would be liberatory would have to work and be articulated through them so that they wouldn't have to be subservient to any kind of disciplinary paradigm, like in political science, it was political socialization.

Based on the conversation and a power I knew by working with Black girls, it was about what we had to say about any idea, concept theory, theory of relativity, from the cosmos to astrology, to politics, all of that would be articulated through what we shared and knew collectively.

And so I was insistent on creating an avenue that sent to Black girls did not sent to a disciplinary concept.

And for me, we named that as Black girlhood studies.

And I'm so encouraged now that so much of the research is starting in the place that I was forced to, but they no longer have to.

They no longer have to sacrifice the girls that they work with in favor of their training, their discipline, or even just their, there's one way to do it.

I think because of the work of those who have come up through SOLHOT who are now PhD scholars, Porsche Garner, Blair Smith, Jessica Robinson, they are doing scholarship as practice, as knowledge making, as art all together, it's fully integrated and engaged and relevant.

And with the girls that they created knowledge and made art with as is the case for Aria Halliday, who edited the "Black Girlhood Studies Reader", encouraging more researchers to come in from this holistic perspective.

And I also just want to acknowledge the work of Monica Gonzales and Grace Payer who are also creating real live conversations between the girls that they work with, the knowledge that they make, and also bring in cohorts of scholars who do work in Black girlhood studies and focus on girls of color together online on Zoom these days, but also in scholarly conversation, expanding that community.

And that feels like a change that is so important, and are welcome.

- Susi, you know, as Ruth Nicole was talking, there was something really quick that I was thinking about because I think it's not by accident that you have two Black women scholars on this, you know, in this conversation, for this youth summit and this discussion on girlhood.

One thing I think for people to understand, Black girls and women have a unique relationship to the U.S. that other girls and women of color don't have, right.

I think about some of the tropes that exist about us that are rooted in the enslavement of Africans in this country.

Those tropes began there, but over time they have stayed.

And a call that I would have for folks is to begin to critically reflect on how you still react and respond to Black girls based on those unconscious or conscious tropes that you see in the media, all aspects of the media that you know from your own socialization growing up, those still exist, right?

And so that's very real.

We don't talk about that.

We don't talk about that.

It's not to privilege discourse around Black girlhood identities, Black girlhood, and Black girl identities.

But it is to recognize that in addition to Black people, Black women, girls and women have a unique relationship that's rooted in the original racial and racialized gendered oppression in the very foundation of this country.

I think teachers have to contend with that because they'll better understand some of the behaviors, performances ways in which they misunderstand Black girls.

And then we have to have spaces in school where those conversations can occur.

So I did want to lift that up in this space.

- It's such an important point.

And I think it's often not made enough.

This is such a rich, wonderful conversation, and there's so much incredible work happening here.

And there needs to be as much work happening outside of that in order to make change and to your point.

But I do want to thank you both so much for this wonderful conversation for the panel, and I'm going to turn it over to Devon now.

- Thank you so much for having us.

- Yes, thanks.

- And thanks again, Susi, Dorinda and Ruth Nicole for the wonderful conversation.

We've been seated for a little while now.

So we're going to take a quick stretch break, which you can do in your seats, or the isles or at home just get up and stretch in front of your television or computer.

Please remember however, to keep your mask on at all times inside the building, we'll begin the next panel and a roughly nine minutes.

(upbeat music) ♪ See him flossing in that metal ♪ ♪ The game's in a higher level ♪ ♪ Dimensions; we into several ♪ ♪ You see we get them together ♪ ♪ DIY fringe be swangin' ♪ ♪ Bangers-bangers he slanging ♪ ♪ Show on point, he slaying ♪ ♪ He wasn't always this way in fact ♪ ♪ Brown boy slanted eyes ♪ ♪ Bleach-stained sweat suit ♪ ♪ Throwin' water on me ♪ ♪ In the middle school restroom ♪ ♪ Only Brown head in my 9th grade play ♪ ♪ 13 walking in the ♪ ♪ Tunde, Tunde, Tunde ♪ ♪ Now maybe there's a lesson I've been given ♪ ♪ Or some wisdom from the stories that I need to tell ♪ ♪ I need to tell, I need to tell ♪ ♪ And everybody's hoping and scraping and wishing ♪ ♪ They could be something outside themselves ♪ ♪ If I can be me, ♪ - What?

Loud!

♪ Then you can be yourself ♪ ♪ Might not be easy, ♪ - Come on roll outs talk!

♪ It's like we're never satisfied ♪ ♪ It's like we're never satisfied ♪ ♪ Got it locked with that namesake ♪ ♪ Won't stay the same change like every day ♪ ♪ Got it locked with that namesake ♪ ♪ Won't stay the same change like every day ♪ ♪ Smiling through the vicious ♪ ♪ A puzzle piece never fittin' ♪ ♪ A new thread that he was given ♪ ♪ To weave a singular vision ♪ ♪ So I'm not, quittin' they stay, squintin' ♪ ♪ Try to dictate a life they not, ♪ ♪ Living T.O.

been about that truth, ♪ ♪ Spilling don't buck like a deer when shots ♪ ♪ Hit him don't formula one this path ♪ ♪ That you're on we all gotta make our own living ♪ ♪ Cry out loud, don't stay hidden ♪ ♪ Fear to fail, say good riddance, come on ♪ ♪ Now maybe there's a lesson I've been given ♪ ♪ Or some wisdom from the stories that I need to tell ♪ ♪ And everybody's hoping and scr-ping ♪ ♪ And wishing they could be something outside themselves ♪ ♪ If I can be me, then you can be yourself ♪ ♪ Might not be easy ♪ ♪ It's like we're never satisfied ♪ ♪ We're never satisfied ♪ ♪ Got it locked with that namesake ♪ ♪ Won't stay the same change like every day ♪ ♪ Got it locked with that namesake ♪ ♪ Won't stay the same change like every day ♪ ♪ Nathaniel said: "you can't see me ♪ ♪ In February, he freed me ♪ ♪ Cleared my head of debris ♪ ♪ We shattered my boundaries ♪ ♪ And the lowered degree was healing ♪ ♪ Winter was sorely needed ♪ ♪ Like Pakistan, I seceded ♪ ♪ My leaving won't be repeated ♪ ♪ Never read for them tight roles ♪ ♪ My eyes looked where the sky goes ♪ ♪ So rare like albinos ♪ ♪ Poachers, we zoom right by those ♪ ♪ Few in number like rhinos ♪ ♪ Reaching up for them high notes ♪ ♪ Study me like yo Bibles ♪ ♪ Cats fall in line like I'm lion-o ♪ ♪ Now maybe there's a lesson I've been given ♪ ♪ Or some wisdom from the stories that I need to tell ♪ ♪ And everybody's hoping and scr-ping ♪ ♪ And wishing they could be something outside themselves ♪ ♪ If I can be me, ♪ - Say it!

♪ Then you can be yourself ♪ ♪ Might not be easy ♪ ♪ It's like we're never satisfied ♪ ♪ We're never satisfied ♪ ♪ Got it locked with that namesake ♪ ♪ Won't stay the same change like every day ♪ ♪ Got it locked with that namesake ♪ ♪ Won't stay the same change like every day ♪ ♪ Maybe there's a lesson I've been given ♪ ♪ Or some wisdom from the stories that I need to tell ♪ ♪ Everybody's hoping and scr-ping ♪ ♪ And wishing they could be something outside themselves ♪ ♪ If I can be me, then you can be yourself ♪ ♪ Might not be easy ♪ ♪ It's like we're never satisfied ♪ Ah, oh my gosh!

(audience cheering) Y'all, are so amazing.

(laughs) (audience cheering) (upbeat funky music) - What he said is true.

Please feel like you can clap your hands and groove with us tonight.

We love you, thank you so much.

Hey!

(upbeat funky music) ♪ The change in the seasons ♪ ♪ Guarantee to bring out the truest feeling ♪ ♪ What am I doing here still ♪ ♪ With no reason I'm waiting ♪ ♪ Why'd the colors keep changing ♪ ♪ I just want to move on ♪ ♪ But life wants me to move on ♪ ♪ Step by step, it'll seem like I'm going nowhere at all ♪ ♪ The eyes are looking at me ♪ ♪ Grabbing by the vision they don't see me ♪ ♪ Underneath them they got shackles on their feet ♪ ♪ We pull and we push through the crowd ♪ ♪ Convinced that we stand on solid ground ♪ ♪ I will not break I'm not afraid ♪ ♪ They say I'm falling through the wake of time ♪ ♪ I will not break from all of the hate ♪ ♪ Convert me from the edge of all your pain ♪ (upbeat funky music) ♪ Take me away ♪ ♪ There's something in my head I just can't escape ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Agree to disagree ♪ ♪ My conscience versus me ♪ ♪ We got to learn to speak now ♪ ♪ We pull and we push through the crowd ♪ ♪ Convinced that we stand on solid ground ♪ ♪ I will not break I'm not afraid ♪ ♪ They say I'm falling through the wake of time ♪ ♪ I will not break from all of the hate ♪ ♪ Convert me from the edge of all your pain ♪ (upbeat funky music) Here we go!

(upbeat funky music) ♪ They say I'm falling through the wake of time ♪ ♪ I will not break from all of the hate ♪ ♪ Convert me from the edge of all your pain ♪ (upbeat funky music) How y'all doing?

(audience cheering) (bright music) - Okay, let's get back to our seats and get ready for the final panel for our event today, which is titled The Arts as a Means for Self-expression and Youth Empowerment.

Our moderator will once again, be Susi Elkins.

Welcome back to the stage, Susi.

Our first panelist for this discussion is Heather Martin.

Heather is the founding director of Youth Arts Alliance, a community-based organization that establishes opportunities for creative expression in the juvenile justice system.

Since YAA's founding in 2013, thousands of young people, their families and community members from across Michigan have engaged in healing-centered, high quality arts programming.

Youth Arts Alliances work can be found in the Free Your Mind exhibition at the MSU Broad Art Museum.

Welcome Heather.

Our second panelist is Clara Martinez.

Clara is the dance director at Everett High School in Lansing School District.

She is the chair of the Michigan Dance Council, co-chair of the City of Lansing Mayors Art and Cultural Commission and chair of the Mayor's Arts Education Committee.

In 2020, Clara won Best Dance Instructor in the City Pulse Top of the Town Awards.

In 2021, she was recognized as a Rising Leader in the Arts in Michigan.

Clara is pursuing her Master's of Social Work in Organization and Community Leadership at Michigan State University.

She also received her bachelor's of Fine Arts and Dance from the Ohio State University.

Welcome Clara.

- Thank you.

And our third panelist is Stephany Bravo.

Stephany was born in Los Angeles and raised in Compton, California to parents of Mexican descent.

She's pursuing a dual doctorate degree in Chicano, Latino studies and English at Michigan State University where she studies community-based Archival practices and crafts testimonios.

Welcome Stephany.

So as a reminder, you'll have opportunities to ask a few questions.

So be thinking of those questions and when it is time, we'll call on you at the microphones to speak your questions.

At this time Susi please feel free to take it away.

- Okay.

Thanks Devon.

Welcome Heather, Clara, and Stephany.

So glad to have you here to have a great conversation about the arts.

And I'm just wondering if you'd each like to introduce yourselves and tell us about your involvement with the arts.

- Sorry.

Thank you.

So I'm a lifelong practicing artists since I was very young and I believe that arts and access to artistic opportunities and spaces where you can express yourself fully is truly a human right and a deep connective tissue for a lot of the healing that I think communities need.

And I am a trained social worker.

I received my master's of social work from the University of Michigan, but I certainly hold my identity as artist, performer, writer, really close to heart.

- Thank you.

Welcome.

- So my name is Clara Martinez and I'm a dancer by trade and by training.

I think probably when I was, what?

Three or four years old, I started, you know, dancing around the house.

And so that tipped off to my parents, you should probably get this person in some dance classes and never really stopped dancing since.

So now as a community leader, as a dance director a performing arts high school, I utilize my dance background in that very specific way, but also as an advocate for dance throughout the community in different community spaces to engage the public as a means of participatory politics and also civic engagement as dance and other art forms as a practice of engaging with your government in one way or another.

- Thank you.

- Stephany.

- Yeah, so my connection to art is community, right?

My community, my home is in Compton, California.

So I'm representing for my community right now, but back home, predominantly Black, Latinex community, low income community, community with undocumented folks, terrible public school system, right?

So people take to the streets to show what their art is, so we have murals and some of these murals are new.

We have murals from, I mean, the past central Americans.

But we also have murals dating back to the 1970s through the Compton Communicative Arts Collective, which was a Black-centered art collective based in Compton and also music, right.

Everyone, when they think about Compton, they think about N.W.A, right?

They now think of Lamar.

And so I think that was always around me.

And for me as a girl growing up, it was just really looking at that art and reflecting why it was created, right.

And I think it also spoke to, you know, levels of systemic racism and ways in which people wanted to show that they belonged here, that the existed.

And so for me, it's really documenting those stories, even though I always present myself as like a doctoral student.

I also think I am a poet and an artist, right.

And most of my scholarship and the work that I do is building around trying to create that space through the written word of how to hold space for communities, but also for myself, right.

Because I am part of that community.

So what does it mean to be in this bridge?

- It strikes me that you're all talking about arts as community in various ways.

And I'm just wondering if you can speak a little bit about what creativity in self-expression, what role that plays in youth empowerment specifically.

Heather, do you want to start?

- Sure.

You know, I think one thing that's critical for Youth Arts Alliance work in making opportunities for self-expression and creativity is that the founding of Youth Arts Alliance was really born out of the feedback from adults who were incarcerated in Michigan gain experiences in the arts.

So visual art, theater, creative writing.

And at the time I was doing workshops in the adult system and the feedback was unanimous.

You know, the themes were consistent.

What if I had more opportunity to express myself to be exposed to different art forms, to share my talents, my skills, things that are undiscovered yet present, right.

And one thing that's really important in our work at Youth Arts Alliance is that everyone comes into this space with inherent creativity, imagination, vision, talent, and capability.

That's not something that we're constructing, but that truly in the inception of Youth Arts Alliance, the building of community around arts, it was because arts being offered to young people in the juvenile justice system in a high-quality way, in the best materials, in the most enthusiastic and dedicated teaching artists practitioners.

So I'm sitting here today as the founding director of Youth Arts Alliance, but we have a cohort of 20 incredible teaching artists who hold a ton of discipline and practice in sharing arts as a vehicle, as a tool to access our inner worlds and our, and to make sense of our exterior were worlds.

And so I think, let me just take a breath, (all laughing) which I can hear my own breath.

- [Susi] It's a big topic.

So I think arts practice as youth empowerment is an interesting frame.

I think that arts offer us an opportunity to go beyond frameworks, systems, narratives that are constructed around us.

I think art is a pathway to explore, discover our own personal identities, to access our ancestors and make connections to the space at present, to dream up futures, right.

And one thing that I think is critical in the lens of the carceral state or systems failing systems in our society is that those systems are not just an immediate intervention in a life, right.

That they carry language and narrative.

And so when we think about young people who are impacted by the juvenile justice system, or more specifically, who are harmed by that system, which we know to be true, the intersectionality of systems and marginalization presents a narrative that's recorded sometimes beginning in utero.

We have systems of social services that come into homes, make messaging, narrative, case notes, about a family, about a household.

And then we go into school and we have messages around our identities based on report cards or disciplinary actions or notes, right?

And for young people who find themselves in a juvenile justice system, those narratives are exasperated by court notes and public comment and then we go on to probation or parole and the folks in those systems are making narrative mention of people's lives.

And I think arts as empowerment at large youth adult or otherwise is really about a liberation of narrative being autonomous to self, of being able to speak, feel authentically in our bodies and to have a pathway to share that.

- It makes me think of our earlier panelists and talking about, I may be, but, and it occurs to me the way you're describing gives an opportunity for someone to speak about how they feel about their true self through artistic expression.

So thank you.

Clara.

- Yeah.

Heather, I think you really laid out really nicely all of the different systems that people have to travel through and navigate, right.

All the way from the macro to the XO and then through to even the specific interactions you have in the day-to-day, right.

So in my role as dance director at Everett, I might have a student come in first hour, someone yelled at them on the bus, they miss their bus, they didn't get to eat breakfast, all of these different breakdowns in their day and all of the systems that they have to navigate.

But I have to bring them back to this moment of saying, I know that maybe this morning didn't go so great, but let's bring you back to yourself.

We're going to dance.

We're going to put that on pause and we're gonna come in back to your body.

And so dance as a way of youth empowerment and self-expression is allowing students to find their own agency and hear their own voice more clearly, as some of our panelists spoke about earlier today, even being able to say your name and pronounce it the right way, right.

That gives you a sense of yourself that might have gotten taken away at some point from the beginning of the day to right now.

So as a dancer, I process so much of the world through not only my own physical body and movement, but reading and perceiving other people's bodies as well.

And so allowing students away to have a process to become more embodied and back into their body is so vital.

And I've had a lot of students say to me, "Not necessarily because of my class, but just because of dance at school in general."

Dance in the public school systems, get students to class, it gets students to school because it might be the only point in the day where they get to be who they truly are.

- Yeah, I'm going to take the personal approach to this question.

I think, so growing up in a K through 12 system that has systemically placed Black and Latinex students at the chopping board of higher education really motivated me at a personal level too.

I was always a fighter.

I also think that comes from these legacies of mothering, grandmothers that we always have to fight, right.

And there's always a place for us even when we cannot imagine it, right.

And so when I think about some of the poems that I write right now, they are about me growing up at the age of 10, 8.

Also thinking through police brutality, because I was also born in 1992, which is also a very precarious moment when we think about the Los Angeles Rebellions.

But it also speaks on behalf of a Black community that is now also coming in with the flow of undocumented people from Latin America.

And what does that experience center this intersection?

And so the stories that I write now have to document that, but also document the experiences of me being in the back of my dad's seat, who is an undocumented person and having those red, white and blue lights in the back.

And me as a child sitting behind and having to synthesize a process of how do I make myself look presentable to the cop that will approach my parent, right.

And my mom also having my back and being like, you know, the drill, you put your seatbelt on and be respectful.

And so I think that those are also things that the communities that y'all work with might be going through, right.

Black and Brown youth.

And so I really think that the spaces that y'all are making are contributing factors into like the arts as a pivotal moment, right.

Which is something that I didn't have.

I know that for me, I had like a journal or something to write in.

But my school didn't cater those types of programs.

So it was really looking to what my family members were doing, what my community was doing.

My community was tagging up on walls, right.

My community was tagging up on even textbooks, right.

To create an identity, to create a formation of their being, where they are not seen.

And so, yeah, I think there's a power to story, right.

And what y'all both are created, even if it's through dance, right.

An artists making, there's a story to be told, and there's a history, there's a generational lineage.

And so I think that this space is also a proper representation of the work ahead, right.

The work ahead of challenging institutions in order to carve my space in the arts, when we don't see a lot of representation, particularly when we think about even museums in general too, right.

And so the work that you contributed there too, is also pivotal in making that change.

- Thank you.

I think you've talked a bit about how sharing culture can create welcoming spaces, but can you talk a little bit more about welcoming in equitable spaces across gender, the gender spectrum?

I'm curious to know your thoughts on that.

I'm going to ask all three of you.

So, whoever goes first.

(all laughing) - I guess I was thinking of this question a little bit more anecdotally within some of the experiences that I've had at Everett.

So as I was listening to our panelists earlier, a story of mine came to mind with a student of mine who is a Black teenage girl, and I am a Chicana, right.

And so I had had this student for probably two or three years at this point.

And we came to class participated.

She was a great choreographer, great dancer.

And she just kind of stopped me one day after class and said, "Ms. Martinez, I'm so sorry.

I thought you were just some white lady.

I didn't know you were Mexican."

And so breaking all of that down, I just kind of laughed because I thought, "Well, first of all, no need to be, sorry.

Second of all, I'm not Mexican, but we can like go through some of that, what this identity of being Chicana really means and how, who we are doesn't have to be put in just one narrow pathway.

And that perhaps there is more to you that I don't know about that you could share with me as well, right?"

And so in dance, because our bodies are political, just because of how they are exteriorly, we don't even get to that interior piece.

It's really important to think about the statement that your body is making and the assumptions like our panelists talked about earlier that you make just by walking in the room.

And so in thinking about how do we create equitable spaces?

You know, it took two or three years for that student to have that realization and also felt as if she had to admit something to me, which of course she never had to.

But I think it's a consistency and ensuring that you're going to keep the promises that you make and you allow people to be who they really are and you show up for them on a regular basis.

I think just basic classroom management, to an extent, not disciplining students, but in my context, allowing students to be present and know that they are safe and secure where they are and then the culture can be shared and then equity can actually be reached.

- Thank you.

- I think, all Youth Arts Alliance workshops start in the same way.

We call our names into space, much like the panel earlier.

It's really powerful to share your name.

Sometimes when we enter a space, we do what we call a weather check-in.

So if you're the meteorologist of your own day, share your name and talk about the weather that you've faced today.

And I think, I think part of coming together and sharing space is an acknowledgement that we all have different weather, that our weather patterns are different.

That the way that they travel across our day is organic and moveable, that our feelings don't stay in any one weather condition, that there are things on the horizon.

There are things immediately that we're feeling.

And so this idea of cultivating space that is safe for expression and safe in the context that it might be safe, right?

I think language is so powerful and we can assume safety because we say it's there.

I think that safety is an internal awareness that is also practiced to be aware of safety.

And so this idea of creating spaces, I could talk a lot about that because I think this idea of safe space, equitable space, institutional space.

So how do you teaching artists with Youth Arts Alliance cultivate a space that offers enough safety for someone to choose to express themselves?

You know, we're doing art making in carceral settings, in locked doors, in behind concrete, behind what can be sort of a chorus of corrective language, right?

In fact, how bodies move in carceral spaces is incredibly managed.

And I'm thinking about embodiment, thinking about being, wholeness, also thinking about adolescents as a natural state of being, to come of age, right?

And we are locking bodies in spaces, and we are telling bodies how to move: hands behind your back, head down, walk quietly.

Prior to Youth Arts Alliance offering workshops in these facilities, young people were given a two-inch pencil without an eraser without metal and pieces of lined paper.

And you know, it's remarkable, we're approaching 10 years as an organization.

And it was just, you know, 10 years ago, I was in my '98 Honda Accord with art supplies in the back and traveling to these workshops.

And since we've been able to create mosaic sculptures inside carceral settings, 30,000 pieces of broken glass in a locked residential facility with young people that for safety or not are locked away from community.

And it's like, how do you travel these ideas of space?

How do you travel from a two-inch pencil to 30,000 pieces of glass, really at the pace of trust and connection and awareness.

And so thinking about equity, thinking about safety, these things are practices.

These are personal practices that we can share and collectively create.

The spaces where we do programming vary across community and in these carceral settings.

But the agreement that we make at the beginning of a workshop, the sharing of our whether that's cultivated by those in the room.

And I think that that's a really important and organic and amorphous piece to this work, which is that any space can't be created again, right.

That our bodies and space are a part of what makes things feel equitable or safe in how you share it.

- Yeah, my introduction to coalition work was in community right after being at home and then building in community.

I started this org along with someone else Lucha Arevalo called Chicas Charlando.

And I think that for the first time ever, that's when I was like, we have a lot of girls, right.

We could always say, we're all girls, but these girls come with a bunch of other things, right.

We are not all one of the same.

And I think having that presence of girls who were also mothers, mamas, right.

Girls who were born in Compton, but moved, girls who were studying in the area, but weren't from there, but still had like some sense of community.

And then taking that work into like charter schools in Los Angeles where we were serving, they always referred to them as like these bad apples.

Folks that we knew they were gonna get like chopped.

And for me, it's also in that story, right.

So we had undocumented folks, folks who were from single-family homes, folks that had just gotten out of juvie, navigating that world and that realm.

And so having that space for them in an institution that has already placed itself as like the end, right.

And so instead of having, you know, those disciplinary actions after school detention, like finding innovative ways, right.

Most of them liked the notebooks having that like special journal to go back to, right.

And so I'm thinking about this transition from community to charter school and now that I teach at the university level, right.

And what does community mean?

They're in a pandemic through Zoom.

And so I was very honored to teach introduction to women authors through the English department, especially thinking about the transition in population and culture.

And what does it mean for me to be teaching introduction to women authors and what does that look like as someone who is identified as a Mexican American, right.

And having space for them to learn U.S. style of feminisms.

Something that as a first year undergrad, you're probably like, what's going on here?

How are you learning?

In the English department, right.

Where you're like, I thought we're going to do like some Shakespeare, like what's going on here.

Very canonical works but also introducing to a larger framework of us style of feminist that are engaging in politics and our rights.

So Audre Lorde, the personal, the political.

What does that mean?

And engaging in those stories.

So I offer those like three different sets of explanations, just because I think that the movement work is still the same, right.

We're still trying to create and craft a space for folks to be the best that they can possibly be.

Despite of economic background, despite of gender, despite of class.

We are really trying to do that work about diversity and equity and inclusion.

What does that look like?

And so I try to make that a space where we can question it, but also in that questioning envision, right.

What does it mean?

And does that mean that someone else is representing you or that you are formulating even your language or your art in order to do that representation in spaces that have traditionally casted you out.

Be that the city of Compton, California, that does not recognize a lot of it's Black or Latinex woman, be that at a charter school that does not equip its students with the right tools in order to go on into the workforce or into doctoral programs, or undergraduate programs, be that here at Michigan State University, right.

Where we also need to amplify this meaning about what diversity means, right.

And so creating that and cultivating that nurturing space for all our student populations and all those girls and women.

- Thank you.

We've touched on this a bit, but research informs us that surveillance and mass incarceration disproportionately targets and adversely impacts young people disadvantaged by poverty, immigration status, race, or ethnicity, gender, and previous encounters with the law.

Please describe the impacts you've seen in the communities where you live and work.

You've touched on it a bit, but I don't think we can emphasize that enough.

And what role did the arts play in helping people feel empowered or communicate about their experiences.

- I could go.

(laughs) I'm like, I don't want to, you know, we have order here, but yeah.

So I've been in Lansing for probably three weeks.

Yeah.

I was back home.

And I think when that question emerged, I was really thinking through this past summer, right.

Not this summer, the past summer, anti-Blackness, protests, during a pandemic again, reinvisioning the apocalypse all over again it felt like...

But also having that again, going back to the personal and the stories, right?

So my mom was telling me about their experiences during the 1992 rebellions as undocumented folks, how our local baker got on top of the roof and was protecting the (speaks Spanish) other stores were getting looted.

Other Latinex communities were joining Black folks in looting, right.

But also that not looting.

I don't want to leave this talk and have looting as like this negative connotation, but really using that space and time to take back, right.

Something that for lives that were lost, it's not the same, they're two different things.

But as a practice of rebellion in a space that has not provided.

And so I thought these stories that were emerging from my mom and my dad about living in an apartment building at the top and like seeing how the manifestations of LA distant, not too distant, but close to Compton and how that flooded into the city of Compton.

And I think those having those histories and those recollections were very critical and important for me as a Latinex scholar, now going back home after spending one year in Lansing pandemic hit, I return into figuring out the ties and the intersections between Black indigenous and people of color at large during that hot summer of anti-Blackness.

And still having to conceive of like near Compton we have like 30 minutes a woman's jail, right.

Also conceiving of the fact that we still have a very, an undocumented community, and what does that mean?

So surveillance has been a part of this city for a long time, but at the same time, I want to acknowledge that there is a resistance.

I also don't wanna make it like a flowery vision because we also have to think, for example, that Compton right now is currently being gentrified.

And we could think about that easily, the surveillance, or who is able to cross space with one example, I'll give you the example of, I don't know if y'all have seen "King Kunta" by Kendrick Lamar that video, anyone, anyone maybe not, but maybe someone in the web out there is.

So that music video was filmed on top of the Compton Fashion Center.

The Compton Fashion Center was a space, a Swap, but also was a space where early, late '90s, early 2000s, there was like a supermercado where people would go get their vegetables.

It was also space for Saturdays and Sundays where the DJ would be playing cumbia really creating that space of kin, right.

Because we also had like the record store that had a whole different like scene of genre.

We had a little arcade.

And so also thinking about what that space is now, so that space is now a Walmart, right.

And so having like that completely, that community completely being stripped away and that music video also has a homage to this space that is not safe, right.

Also thinking about Eazy E at the beginning, being able to sell mix tapes, right.

Like just handing them off, selling them in Swap meets right.

In these community environments that really nourished us.

And what does it mean to be surveilled and not have that space and be taken over by a Walmart no longer having that community space.

So I think these are still things that we need to unflesh and really think through, because surveillance is not an end, right.

At least I don't see it ending.

And I'll just stop right there.

(laughs) - Thank you so much.

- That was great.

I think about this in the context of the dance studio, because there are lots of different ways in which I could answer this question because I don't directly work with those that are mass incarcerated and I don't directly deal with surveillance in the larger scale or the macro scale of things, but in looking at how it affects people that I am working with in the dance studio in a choreographic context and moving them beyond the space of the literal and moving them to a place of conveying a feeling.

So there was when I was in undergrad at Ohio State, don't hate, I had several professors that they would discussing, "We need more Black and Brown women and different people of color and people from different trainings involved in dance."

And so what does that look like and how do you get those people to the table and how do you get them making dances about things that are not just autobiographical solos that everybody watches, right.

And this is a topic that has come up a lot for students that I have worked with not only at Everett, but in different community spaces as well.

And I've known people that have done great work within the prison systems.

Obviously Heather has done some amazing work and Stephany has some great context and background information.

And I've had friends of mine that have gone on to teach classes in women's prisons and worked with them in that very direct way, but in a choreographic way for students, it's about the loved one that they don't get to see anymore.

It's about the feeling of uncertainty and the lack of knowing when something is going to begin versus when it's going to end, right.

When am I going to see this person again, am I seen as a person that could belong in this environment or not, good versus bad and how that is conveyed through the body in a way that for my clientele are 13 to 18 year olds, and they could put forth a master's thesis, I feel, based on this topic alone, just knowing the depth of experience and information they have in a physical way based upon their own life experiences.

So that's how I've directly dealt with this.

- Thank you, Heather, before we get to you, I just want to invite, we should have a few minutes at the end for questions.

So if there's anyone in the audience that wants to make their way to the microphone to ask a question, please do.

And if we have any from the live stream, we'll accept those.

But go ahead.

- I think that this idea of surveillance and monitoring of mass incarceration and sort of the carceral state, we know this to be true.

All of you watching now, you know, you know more than we have ever known about the harm of mass incarceration, of surveillance and monitoring.

And what I think feels more important to talk about, and not as you said, not in a flowery way, but what does liberation from these systems look like, feel like?

How do we create something we've never had?

And I think that the arts are a tool for that are an exacting tool.

And there's an incredible industry, right?

There's capitalist motive for this community harm.

And there's also institutional awareness for decades.

Research has indicated to us the harm of the juvenile justice system that really by its making its intent was harmful and that the juvenile justice system mirrors the adult system, and both of these systems were built to manage disenfranchise and warehouse living beings, right.

And those systems were built with men in mind.

And so when we think about surveillance and monitoring and some of this...

It's become increasingly clear to me as a practitioner, a teaching artist that the holding out of hope and inspiration in this space, in this imagined space that we can create together is replicated over and over and over again, any time you're proximate to young people.

And it is brilliant to be near young people.

And I just want to say that to the audience, because there's so much messaging and there's so many channels, right?

That you can express yourself in this world, but I want you to know that it is so wonderful to be near young people and to create collaboratively, collectively with young people, because anyone who spends a lot of time with visionary leaders and civic leaders, you know.

In Washtenaw County Youth Arts Alliance was a part of collaborating on the first youth led prosecutorial forum, where candidates were answering questions of young people who were not a voting age.

And I think that the brilliance of the civic engagement and leadership of the young people who pose these questions really critical inquiry for these candidates that resulted in a change of that role of a prosecutor in Washtenaw County for the first time in 28 years and their momentum and advocacy was a big part of that.

And so a lot of this work in bringing arts, arts is liberation.

Investment in an arts and culture and community is the antithesis to the carceral state, to free ourselves, to express ourselves, to be in space where we can be our wholeness to come to understand our wholeness, you know.

I once heard a practitioner described this work as alchemy.

And I really love that.

I love this idea that we cannot know what emerges from this space, that by gathering how our bodies move, the words to tell our story, that, that is a certain alchemy and a connection to inner self that needs to be shared.

And so I would say for monitoring and surveillance in this carceral system, I would invite the system to monitor and surveil the brilliance that is held captive inside of it.

Because that would be, that would be earth shattering.

I mean, that is what is on display at the Broad Art Museum right now.

And it's important to stand witness to that because in the most inhumane conditions, creativity and imagination abounds, and there is nothing that will stop an artist or a writer or a performer from being an artist, a writer, and a performer.

And in this world where identities are complex and unending and shifting and growing and changing an identity as artists will bring you the most flourishing nourishing community.

And I think the more opportunities that we provide people to tap into their identities as artists, performers, expressives, creatives, it's critical.

- Thank you.

I do have one question from the audience.

They're wondering if you could each tell us about a specific art piece or expression that stands out to you.

Our earlier panel shared their inspiration from elders and had with them creative works of art that were inspiring to their work.

Are there expressions or pieces of art that do the same for you?

- I could go.

Do I?

We have a mural done in 1970.

I can't remember 1977, maybe.

Don't quote me on that.

Look it up.

Elliott Pinkney mural called "Ethnic Simplicity".

1970 something created with his son, Arnold Pinkney.

That mural if you could look it up, you'll see that it has different figures.

It has someone that may or may not be indigenous, right?

Because we don't know Pinkney what was the process?

I've tried to look it up in the archives.

We have someone who is Black.

We have someone who is a Pacific Islander, but at the center of that, there's like this molding, right?

So ethnic simplicity as like this molding and this binding and in this space that is Compton.

I think that mural is great because it also before Pinkney put that image there, that used to be a tagging spot for a Latino gang.

So when Elliott Pinkney put that mural up, he really wanted to create something that was for everyone.

That when you saw yourself, that when you saw, you could see yourself reflected in one way or another, in one of the pieces, right.

Not even the figures, it could be like the borders, right?

Because there was also like different patterns going on there.

But the thing about it in 2020, which this is what I really love about that mural is that we now have graffiti artists, taggers, right.

Going there and adding to that piece, weaving in their stories.

And it's not in a way that it covers the mural, but it's very tactful, right?

Like they'll do graffiti or tagging around the mural.

And I think that is like brilliance and like this weaving from the 1970s, but even before 1970s, before Elliott Pinckney did that mural to think about like a Latino gang that used to tag, but now 2021, and we still have like graffiti artists really practicing on that wall so that they could take it to other places.

And those central figures are still there.

So I really liked that as this weaving, weaving of the community, weaving of stories, weaving of these, what would I call it?

Like this just tie Like, there's this connection and this tie and respect that I really want to think through, not only as like a visual, but also like in your everyday life practice, right?

How do we weave in building community?

- That's great.

Something that came to mind while we were sitting here is there are lots of authors and poets and artists that speak to me directly, but something that I never anticipated, meaning so much to me as a dancer, has anyone ever heard of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater?

Alvin Ailey's most famous work "Revelations", has traveled all over the world.

Millions of people have seen it.

It's basically like reading a classic book.

It's everybody, who's everybody has seen it.

And something that I didn't anticipate growing up is that I would be the first person to show that to a group of students every year.

So this is their first time seeing it, every time I show it and to see their faces and to see their experience that they're having.

It's really remarkable for me because as a dancer, I always thought, "Okay, I've seen that one.

Now I have to go see all of these other works to educate myself further" but for them to have that moment to really see themselves in that art, it's a precious, precious piece to me.

- [Susi] Thank you.

- I think we just have a minute or so left.

How about you, Heather?

- I just wanted to call sort of into this space some of the artwork or the poetry lines of poetry from the young people that are participating in YAA workshops.

And when we created our first album, these were all original tracks and lyrics created inside carceral settings.

And one of the songs on the album is, "Keep Growing".

And the lyric is, "I'm six feet tall, but my soul keeps growing."

And I think that the possibilities for art to communicate so much is so rich.

And so I'm thinking about that song in particular right now, knowing, holding those now not so young people in my heart who created this song, this was years ago as they articulated what it meant to have a six foot four, Black body, but to be 15 years old.

And I'm six feet tall, but my soul keeps growing, I'm growing.

And I think just remembering children and growing is really powerful.

- Well, thank you so much what a great question from the audience, we appreciate that so much.

I want to thank the panel for joining us as they turn it over to Devon.

Thank you, Heather, Clara and Stephany.

We really appreciate everything that you shared with us today.

It's been wonderful.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Well, once again I want to thank you, Susi, Heather, Stephany, and Clara for a really rich and wonderful conversation on creativity, self-expression building community and how that intersects with gender equity.

That was really inspiring.

Thank you.

And also once again, would like to thank Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown and Dr. Dorinda Carter Andrews for that conversation on gender bias and those kinds of equity issues, as well as the importance of thinking about mentors in community, that thread was seen throughout today.

So thank you so much for that.

As a reminder, this Regional Youth Summit is coming to an end here, but the National Youth Summit continues online until October 12th.

So there is a variety of educational materials, lesson plans, activities, and other rich content.

Please be sure to log onto americanhistory.si.edu/nys.

We certainly would like to extend our utmost gratitude to our colleagues and friends here at WKAR for hosting us here today.

Also we want to express our gratitude to the staff of the MSU Broad Art Museum, the MSU Museum and Science Gallery for their work on this program.

We certainly could not have done it without them.

And of course, for all of you who are tuning in here today for your time and energy to reflect with us on this rich conversation.

Certainly we'll remain in contact, until then be safe and stay well.

(bright music)