IDG Girls Speak Out

http://dayofthegirlsummit.org/

October 11 th marks the annual celebration of the International Day of the Girl at the United Nations. This program is called the Girls Speak Out and invites girls, girl supporters, and high-level intervenors coming together to reflect as a community on where we stand today in the struggle to ensure girls’ rights are human rights.

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To amplify girls’ voices and experiences and to honor the legacy of the past and the resilient hope of the future, the Working Group on Girls produces a dynamic, energizing and inspiring event featuring policymakers, girl activists and girl performing artists to celebrate and acknowledge where girls stand in the present day. The performances include pieces submitted from girls around the world in response to a theme each year. Selected girl activists respond to this question by addressing how their work contributes to the progress that has been made by girls, for girls, in their communities. The performers highlight the incredible work that girls are doing which proves them resilient, while also pointing to the oppressions that girls continue to face in their countries, communities, schools and homes. In addition to the performers sharing poetry, monologues, and multimedia addressing issues such as health, education, gender inequality and other topics, policymakers join the girls to speak about the work they are doing in their countries and organizations to support girls.

Girl Gone Global

New Orleans, Chicago, South Carolina, Ethiopia, Tanzania, New Jersey, New York, and more

Girl Gone Global brings spoken word poetry, photovoice, and performance to groups of girls around the world. The creative work by girls and for girls is included in a global cultural exchange. The Girl Gone Global project offers insight into the gaps between legislation and lived experiences by girls in different communities. These insights, when shared through the arts, create moments of transformative opportunity and social change

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Girls in each city participate in an arts and social justice workshop. During this workshop they produce, perform, and publish poetry and visual/digital artworks that respond to social issues girls face including sexual harassment, identity, relationships, and equality in their specific location. Techniques such as PHOTOVOICE, spoken word poetry, and film are combined to produce multi-media exhibits. The girls’ work is then shared within their community. The girls’ artworks are also incorporated into the annual International Day of the Girl Speak Out event hosted by the United Nations on October 11. In this way, girls learn about what girls in other places are facing and how they the arts can work to address and transform their world.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus

https://brooklynyouthchorus.org/

Since 2015, Crystal Leigh has partnered with award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus to raise social awareness with the young people who participate. BYC was founded by Diane Berkun Menaker in 1992 to bring representation and inclusivity to choral singing. Her goal is to “reflect the communities of the members of the chorus,” and artists such as Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Pharrell, and more have showcased the group’s amazing work.

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Diane and her team reached out to Crystal Leigh to find a way to develop and educate the young singers around issues such as identity, values, privilege and power, and gender. The partnership began with the first installment of the series “Silent Voices.” “Silent Voices is a multimedia, multi-composer, and multi-year series of concert works with spoken word conceived, produced and performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Silent Voices amplifies the voices of those silenced or marginalized in our communities and harnesses the power of young people to be instruments of change. The Chorus has commissioned a dynamic group of innovative artists to interpret rich personal stories and historical narratives exploring contemporary themes of identity, orientation, status, boundaries, and belonging” (www.brooklynyouthchorus.org).

Crystal Leigh continues to collaborate with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, infusing spoken word poetry and personal narratives into their work, and providing historical background on contemporary social issues that are raised by the young choristers.

Girls Do STEAM!

Solar Suitcases

Girls Do STEAM (GDS) is as an interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly collaboration that centralizes the role of the Arts and Design within projects focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM + Arts = STEAM). Driven by innovation and creativity, Girls Do STEAM utilizes this framework as a way to engage girls in social justice service projects. Girls Do STEAM also seeks to connect communities of global girls using the arts and sciences.

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The broad objective of Girls Do STEAM is to reconsider education, and we aim to ultimately transform curriculum, policy, and the creative practices utilized to incorporate elements of art and design into humanities research. Each community partnership has offered Girls Do STEAM an entrance to suggest the arts and humanities as a means of creating a new more equitable way of life for women and girls that face particular struggles related to their social, historical and political contexts.

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