Creative Youth Development: Youth Voice, Community-Building, Social Justice, and the Arts

James Arana, Julie Lichtenberg (co-directors of The Performance Project, TPP), Montaser Abdelrahman, Moise Jackobo, and Hatangerwa “Julita” Hasani , will share their experience with Creative Youth Development, a practice that holds social justice, youth voice, and the arts at its center. Workshop participants will experience some of First Generation’s creative process of building a loving intergenerational community that supports connection, joy, creativity, and social and emotional growth, and explore the relationships between community-building, storytelling, healing, performance, and audience. First Generation members will share their experiences and perspectives.  

Trainers:

Julie Lichtenberg is a theater and visual artist and cultural activist who works in community settings as an artist, teacher, facilitator, and director, incorporating visual art and physical theater. Her work and passion is to create opportunities for people, young and old, to build community, freely and creatively express themselves, and connect with each other through artistic and cultural expression. She has designed curricula and taught in many settings, including adult and juvenile prisons, therapeutic programs, community spaces, and schools. Julie co-founded BOOM!theater in a men’s medium security prison in Connecticut, The Performance Project in the Hampshire Jail in 2000, and First Generation in 2008, which brings together artists with young adults who identify as “first generation,” for artistic and leadership training and inter-generational mentoring. Forming an artistic ensemble, First Generation Ensembles create original multi-lingual physical theater with a focus on social justice. They perform at theaters, schools, colleges, festivals, social justice conferences and in community.

James Arana is a social worker, community organizer, and group facilitator with 35 years of experience working in the U.S. and internationally through the Men’s Resource Center, Men’s Resources International, and MERGE for Equality, as well as other organizations, to prevent violence and promote dialogue across race, class, and gender. He a also a co-director of The Performance Project, and teaches martial arts.