"Who Makes Bail"
Young People Exploring Social Justice Concepts and Explaining Them Through Art
When I first looked at the syllabus my eyes were taken captive by a young man standing behind a transparency with a tracing of Dr. Martin Luther King. To me this photo really resinated with me because when I was in high school we had to do a similar project where we had to create an image where we had to "shadow" someone that we one day hoped to emulate. What I see in this piece of artwork is a student that is in a classroom like setting holding up a transparency over his face of MLK, like he emulates MLK, and one day wants to be like him. It appears to have been traced then photographed in such a way that it shows his face through the sheet. I think that without even reading the caption of this youth organization, I was already interested in what they do. The project was put in place by an organization called The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and was lead by Caits Meissner and
- Fielding Hong the students that worked on it were, Michael Afriye, Ty Greene, Samantha Rosa, and Andrew Silverio. This project was a survey they took in a school in the Bronx based on the fact according to CUP, that only 1 out of 10 people in New York could afford the bail that the judge posted for them. They then created a booklet of their findings mixed with art as well. I was actually surprised after I followed the picture to the website and saw their project, for any person still in high school this seems extremely difficult to do. Not only is it so excellently done, but it also was research intensive and showed a great deal of hard work, stamina, and research. I found it interesting that you can buy their work to support other projects put on by CUP. The link to purchase the product is right under the picture.
Here is another example of CUP's awesome work with groups of children in New York!
I like your interpretation of the image--that the boy is creating a "shadow" of someone he hopes to emulate. How if it all might that link up with the group project--Who Makes Bail? And when you did a similar project in high school, who did you shadow?
ReplyDeleteI think it lines up with the whole project in "Who Makes Bail" because Martin Luther King himself was once in jail for his advocacy work. In high school I shadowed Elizabeth Hamilton! I studied her because I had never heard of her before compared to the others on our list of suggested people. I came to admire her because she was a women before her time, speaking out against civil rights issues, and because I have family member who once were in an orphanage.
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