Youthprise Announces New Artist in Residence Initiative
Youthprise is thrilled to announce a new initiative – the Youthprise Artist in Residence – that is designed to build the capacity of young artists, promote diverse voices in the Minnesota arts community and raise the visibility of opportunities for learning beyond the classroom. This initiative brings young artists from different disciplines to Minnesota to work with Youthprise for the summer to build the field of learning beyond the classroom in the Twin Cities, showcase their own art, and expose young people to their art and artistic process.
Learning beyond the classroom programs are a powerful platform for shaping the identity and leadership of young people in urban communities in ways that cannot happen with a focus on academics alone. Twenty-five percent of Youthprise grantees are arts-based organizations and we recognize the power that the arts have in positively impacting the lives of young people and increasing their social emotional skills.
The Artist in Residence is intended to build the capacity of young artists in two ways: Youthprise will invest in the work of the Artist in Residence to build the capacity of emerging artists and to bring diverse perspectives to Minnesota. As a part of the initiative, Youthprise will allocate resources to support the work and dissemination of the Artist in Residence’s work, and will connect the artist with the local arts community in intentional ways. The Artist in Residence will connect with youth from Youthprise grantees and partners to document the youth’s work and to build their social emotional skills and artistic capacity.
The initiative will also feature workshops and lectures held by the Artist in Residence, open to Minnesota youth and community members so local artists can learn from and build strong connections between the work happening in Minnesota and work happening nationally.
Our first Artist in Residence is Nancy Musinguzi. A documentary photographer, narrative storyteller and political artist based out of New York City, Nancy offers a complicated perspective on the many hidden and silent narratives of marginalized persons in American history. She explains, “As a queer woman of color, I have learned a great deal about my own experiences as a marginalized member of the hip-hop community, particularly in my role as a visual narrative storyteller to actively retell and portray a culture with a complicated yet rich past in American history and relationship with Black America’s roots in political activism, civic engagement, community building and popular arts.”
She describes her connection to learning beyond the classroom, “It gave me a voice and injected some sort of autonomy. Because in the classroom you can feel very disempowered and disengaged from your peers. There are some conversations you can’t necessarily have in the classroom that out-of-school time programs provide for young people.”
Stay tuned for more information on Nancy’s gallery showing, and other events around her work.