LIFE Is Living Abstract :: A Process
LIFE by Miguel "Bounce" Perez / Photo by Sal Ibe.
The Campaign
LIFE is LIVING… is a national campaign that uses a new form of green spoken story telling- one that represents the changing perspectives on what it means to be environmentally just. We seek to inspire people to take the value they see in their LIFE and establish it powerfully as a new voice to define what it means to be logistically and psychologically included in the new, clean and green economies.
The “Going Green Movement” is still largely perceived by those living in poor communities and communities of color as inaccessible or irrelevant.
Capturing the living moments of people in these communities, we create a bridge of culturally relevant & personalized conversations. We see this as a method of increasing our communities’ power to influence and benefit from the Green movement, as well as bringing LIFE to environmental injustices. The campaign includes a traveling environmental caucus & concert, an invitational Living Word Graffiti Battle, live action sports, and hands on Green building activities.
The Model
Recent partnerships with the Robert Redford Institute, The U.S. Green Building Council, and HBO have enabled Youth Speaks Inc to establish a new model that works at the intersection of literacy, audience development, and green living.
In 2009-10, The Living Word Project (LWP) will partner with the Cynthia Mitchell Center in Houston, Riverside Church and the City Parks Foundation in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and The Ella Baker Center in Oakland to host eco-equity inter-disciplinary performance events in neglected parks in underserved neighborhoods around the country. Each event will mark an opportunity to model partnerships between diverse and underserved communities, green action agencies, and the contemporary arts world.
The events themselves are based on LWP’s incredibly successful red, black and GREEN Environmental Caucus and Concert (rbG) which attracted 1,500 Bay Area residents to West Oakland’s deFremery Park during the 2008 Living Word Festival.
The thematic focus of each convening will be audience development through the lens of eco-equity, the radically democratic position that poor communities and communities of color are logistically and psychologically included in to the new, clean and green economy. This green economy indicates the rapidly growing billion-dollar sector that includes renewable energy sources, organic produce and products, green buildings, alternative fuel vehicles, and more.
In order to jumpstart a conversation about environmental racism, social ecology, and collective responsibility in a climactic era of climate change, we will present the following activities at each event:
- The Living Word Graffiti Battle. We will partner with Samurai Graphix to curate 20 visual artists into a public outdoor installation. Each artist will each be given a 6X8 foot canvas, biodegradable materials, and non-aerosol, non-toxic paint to create environmentally themed, graffiti style tags around the park. Each artist will paint the word “LIFE”, and we will then hang their murals in 20 different locations around the host city, hoping to catalyze deeper thought and community action around the value of life in communities experiencing record homicide rates. The ensuing campaign visually affirms local sustainability, and was named “LIFE is Living”
- The Music Concert. In the midst of the public outdoor installation-in-progress activities of the graffiti battle, we will hold a mid afternoon outdoor performance in the park. Confirmed artists include the award winning rapper/actor Mos Def, and Common.
- Natural Building. A locally sponsored service learning project for youth that engages participants in the knowledge of, and constructive play with rapid renewable resources such as bamboo, and other materials sourced locally.
- Against Eco-Apartheid: A speaker series. Leading African-American ecological advocates will each present a 30 minute lecture demonstration on the grounds of the respective parks. Invited speakers include the Ella Baker Center’s Van Jones, MacArthur Fellow and Executive Director of the Sustainable South Bronx, Majora Carter, and Kimberly Lewis, Conference Director for the annual Greenbuild International Expo.
- War Peace. An excerpt from The Living Word Project repertory theater piece featuring Emmy Award winning choreographer Jason Samuels-Smith, and the writing of Youth Speaks’ alum and HBO DEF Poets Chinaka Hodge and Daveed Diggs. War Peace confronts the implications of a fictional near future where the city of Oakland is suddenly without water for 30 consecutive days.
Rationale
Through our national LIFE is Living environment concerts we seek to:
- Highlight the fact that youth represent the fastest growing GREEN market
- Foster a local coalition of organizations and people who are already practicing Green
- Illustrate how the power of performance can provoke ways to normalize “GREEN” life
- Seize the tremendous opportunity to chart/map the networks that already exist
- Forge new language of what GREEN includes
- Become primary awareness tool for GREEN Economy
Our Values
Living.
We believe in messages that include crimes against human life just as important as crime against other forms of life in our world. We believe in messages that include environmental crimes against communities like West Oakland & the South Bronx to be just as pressing as those in the Western Arctic & the Southern Amazon.
Word.
We believe that due to the work of great environmental activists and green economy supporters, the dominate narrative has improved with regards to it’s relevancy to youth. Still, this narrative isn’t as accessible as it can be, and it will take brave new voices to creatively tell stories of new perspectives and points of view.
History.
We know as a matter of historical fact, that youth have long histories of actively caring about LIFE. We value the innovations of those encouraging all inclusive methods of “going green” that can be easily implemented. We look to have, as an end-result, a series of performative non-fiction essays in which the ethos of environmental justice & racism are deconstructed as the result of historical facts, rather than inherent or implicit conditions of the human temperament.
Real Possibilities
We believe in messages tied to the reality of what people in urban communities are making possible. We encourage shining light those actively adopting alternatives that can enhance the quality of their lives.
