EarSay Youth Voices
EarSay Youth Voices is a program that serves new immigrant youth and college interns.
EarSay Youth Voices: Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts develops and creates collaborations between disparate communities. Conceived and directed by Judith Sloan, EarSay Youth Voices is a training and mentorship program for high school students to work under the direction of professional artists. The program offers a unique hands-on opportunity for graduate and undergraduate college students to work in teams as mentors and performance collaborators with new immigrant teenagers through a multi-media arts and theatre project in partnership with the International High School at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. Students from 50 different countries, speaking almost as many languages and dialects, populate the international high school. A sister project to Crossing the BLVD, this Cross-Cultural Arts project serves immigrant youth and provides internships to all New York City area college students.. The dialogue and writing classes culminate in EarSay’s public performances. College student interns receive training in theatre, writing, oral history, community organizing, interviewing techniques, performance and documentary art. High School students benefit from the mentorship process, developing their language and writing skills, co-creating and participating in live performances. This unique collaboration across cultures also gives immigrant teenagers exposure to the world of higher education which is often closed to them. Theatre exercises in improvisation, characterization, humor, storytelling, and conflict resolution are used to develop monologues and scenes. All participants form creative teams to produce and document the final performances and public dialogues. The work is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Education and Liberty Partnerships at LaGuardia Community College.
I Am From The Mother of the World
Performance voiced by Darly Aguste from Haiti and Hend Yehia from Egypt. Poetry workshop with teachers Sarah Gil and Amy Rothman with guest teaching artist Catherine Hanna. Video and Photography by Robert Winn. Audio produced by Touré “Southpaw” Harris and Judith Sloan.
Peace In the Streets Video
Video of performance with EarSay Youth Voices
EarSay Youth PSA Going Back to School in Person
This video was created with immigrant youth from Bangladesh, Ecuador, and Algeria at the International High School at LaGuardia Community College as part of EarSay’s arts-in-education programming with teaching artists Emily Wexler and Judith Sloan. All of our theater, songwriting, and poetry workshops went online during during the Covid19 Pandemic year we created music videos and public service announcements in remote workshops. We look forward to seeing each other in person in the Fall of 2021 but we also learned a lot in our remote world and want to take the best practices from what we learned when we meet in person. Please add your comments and ideas in the comment section. To donate to EarSay’s Youth Program go to: https://earsay.org/donate/ EarSay Youth Program is supported in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The International High School and Liberty Partnership.
A Film by Siuleng Liang for EarSay Youth Arts-Education Film Project
In the summer of 2022 EarSay Youth Program at the International High School ran a 6 week workshop in video production led by Tony Koros. This is one of the final films by Siuleng Liang about her love for her grandmother and her grandmother's cooking.