World Savvy: Mapping a Creative Path to Global Education

Students involved in World Savvy's Global Youth Media and Arts Program about immigration. Click for slideshow

A map of the world greets visitors to the New York University Commons art gallery and its showcase of the creative work of students involved in a program about immigration. "Map Your Migration!" the display sings out to the viewer. Spools of brightly colored string demand to be unwound. Pink string to track your migration, we are instructed. Green tracks your family's migration and yellow for your ancestor's journeys. Strings stretch like veins across the world and back and around and between and over and through. Saturated tangles of string are looped in Africa, Latin America and Europe. If there were a volume knob, this map would thump with a heartbeat.

"Most people, when they think about identity, they think about your face," 13-year-old Clive considers as we sit here, surrounded by vibrant art created by young people involved in World Savvy's Global Youth Media and Arts Program. The room pulsates with stories that span multiple continents, celebrating cultural diversity and the immigrant experience in the United States. It is June 2008, and through World Savvy, a unique and innovative, global arts-education project, more than 500 public-school students have been exploring themes of immigration and identity inside and outside of their classrooms. For five months, they've been researching immigration in New York City and sculpting their new knowledge into visual arts and performance projects. I've been journeying with them to learn how their educators infused their arts curricula with the politically and emotionally volatile issue of immigration.

The "Map Your Migration" art piece expresses creatively and succinctly the mission of World Savvy, as stated on the organization’s Web site:

World Savvy's vision for the future is one in which all members of society are well informed about contemporary international affairs and act as responsible global citizens. [They] believe that change will occur if youth are educated about international affairs and are given the tools to think critically about such issues.

The map display illuminates both the extreme diversity of the artists and audiences, and also their shared experiences. By encouraging the viewers to participate in a tactile way, the piece invites them to think about their own ancestors' journeys and recognize the shared routes of others.

World Savvy’s Helpful Signposts

As a community artist and educator, I was particularly interested in how a singular, theme-based curriculum could stretch and torque enough to give each and every student within 20 different schools creative agency over their projects. I witnessed how ripe and seductive the themes of immigration and identity are to young people — and how conducive to artmaking. As part of its educator training, World Savvy publishes a comprehensive and highly useful "collaborator's guide" that provides a map of activities, lesson plans, explorations, field trips and resources, along with provocative images, poetry, stories and quotations. Like signposts on a nature trail, the guide ensures that you won't get lost, but also encourages wanderings off the path. Senior Program Associate Victoria Restler, describing the creation and use of the guide, tells me:

Educators are artists, too, so we wanted to create a whole bunch of snippets and creative inspiration for teachers to pull in whatever way makes most sense to them. In the beginning, we have a glossary [of words and terms related to the theme [immigration and identity] and [one teacher] created an activity where she passed out the glossary and students created a scene using two words they didn’t know."

The colorful, easy-to-navigate glossy book includes writing prompts and ideas for workshops that inspire performance, text and visual arts projects. An example of an interesting exercise is: "Have you ever tried to hide your home language, religion or any other aspect of your family's culture from your friends or classmates? How did it feel? What, if anything would you change about the situation?" Questions like these probe into the personal lives of the students, inspiring them to think critically about their experiences and feelings and to question their past and current behaviors. A potential challenge to these intensive, story-based, emotional activities is the unleashing of painful and personal memories and experiences that kids might not be equipped to deal with. The Collaborators' Guide does not directly address these sensitive issues; it is the responsibility of the teacher to ensure that she or he has created a "safe" classroom where students feel supported to share — or withhold — personal or painful memories.

Opening the Doors of Reflection

One of the most powerful and richly layered art exhibits at the show is a project called "Doors of Reflections." Vivia, a vivacious 12-year-old girl from Jamaica, describes the project to me proudly. She perches on the edge of a wooden stool in the gallery, her yellow sundress glittering with sparkly sequins, and explains,

The whole concept was “doors of reflection,” so it's — when you hold on to a knob and you're turning it and you're thinking about what's behind you and what's going to be in front of you, right? So it's like going back in time in somebody's mind and seeing where they gonna be in the future — or where they are now.

The middle-school class had collected photographs from their lives and homes and created visceral collages that rippled against the broken, cracked wood of an actual door, suspended from the ceiling.

"I'm just a problem that can never be solved. I don't belong here."

"Life is too harsh for me to be able to survive yet I continue on…."

"I will express myself."

"Albania is full of both beautiful and tragic memories. When I was five, the memory of seeing my aunt being shot by two drunk men hunts me & is heavy on my heart"

"Locked is what my door should be with all my secrets."

The middle-school class had collected photographs from their lives and homes and created visceral collages that rippled against the broken, cracked wood of an actual door, suspended from the ceiling. Click for slideshow

These writings, scribbled with crayons, markers, paint and stickers, illuminate lives in which adolescent fears and insecurities are trumped by real terror and the desperate need to survive. I can't look away from the work. These kids have plunged their pens into their hearts and written with the unfiltered ink of raw emotion. Thoughts and secrets and desires are shuffled among photographs of smiling children, sepia-toned portraits of grandparents, geographies of memory, farmland, homeland and cityscape. When my gaze focuses on specifics, my eyes water, but I am at first unsure of these images as expressions of immigrant experience. Then, when I pull back and take in the entirety of the project, the conceptual theme washes over the boards.

The Immigrant Experience Leaks Through the Cracks

Boricuaz
La Boricua
such a shame
Datz all i hear
am i 2 blame
i am hizpanic
wat am i 2 do
IDK I don't have
a clue I cant
change my cul-
ture Itz not mii
fault I juz came
out diz way &
I cant go
back in
Im boricua N
proud Im
juicy NOT
Thin Im
brunette
not blond

The doors are the context, the frame and the canvas for the stories and feelings of the young artists. This poem by "Aze," is scratched into a windowpane in red and blue marker, the text hugging a photograph of a girl, body in profile looking outward into a void. Her shape is cut out and outlined in thick black: shadows that seem to be chasing her. A colored rendering of the Puerto Rican flag hangs suspended above her head. Taken alone, the image haunts, but within the collage of photos of smiling friends, doodles and magazine cutouts, its resonance sings. It is the immigrant experience — confusion, joy, pride, fear and sassiness leak through the cracks in the doorframe. As a work of art, as an expression of a young person’s immigrant experience, the doors project is successful. It supplies images and media juxtaposed to each other in order to tell both individual and collective stories. As a collaboration project, it works on multiple levels. The viewer writes her own creation story of the piece, imagining a scenario where a group of 12- and 13-year-olds share scissors, glue, markers and laughter as they build the piece together. The images evoking pain and sorrow harmonize with those of survival and joy to tell a layered story of resilience.

Vivia sums up the process for me:

Through this project, everyone united with each other. Because everybody has a story to tell and everybody told their own story and now you get to see everybody's story. The fact that it's an art project really gives the person who's looking at it more in-depth features about who we are. And they get to see pictures of your life.

Creating Group Identity

The art projects that live within this gallery show communicate ideas and themes beyond language. In today's ever-changing mediascape, where technology maps and marks adolescence through posted, public photos and journal rants on Web sites like myspace.com, it makes sense that teenagers, when asked for an expression of "identity," will blanket a canvas with snapshots and poetry. These bedazzled doors allow me entry into the traveled histories and emotions of these middle-school students. The theme "immigration and identity" implies exploration deep into personal issues. But there are many interesting instances where a collective and single aesthetic overrides individual voices. Aware of my personal bias toward celebrating and foregrounding individuals, I pay particular attention to this aspect of the project. It is fascinating to see how youth created "group identities" through teamwork and collaboration and how visual arts projects made this endeavor possible.

Because the World Savvy program partnered with 20 different schools and over 500 students, it provided a wide spectrum of diverse projects that demanded quite different definitions of "success." It is clear that the youth circulating around the exhibit are deliciously proud of their work and love talking about it. A clothesline stretches across the space with brightly colored t-shirts shouting out social-justice messages. A banner loops the perimeter of the room, taped to the wall at ankle height with a tickertape of "I am from…" statements including, "I am from the unknown mystery of my religion." An altar set up against a wall "worships" a can of collared greens beside a can of Goya beans beside a map of the United States at the foot of a globe beneath candles and flowers and photographs. The exhibit throbs with colors, celebrations, pride and exuberance.

For an activity called "The Journey is the Destination: A Field Trip on the Subway,” these students, all of whom were born outside the United States, were placed in diverse groups to take the 7 train across the city and create a short animated film that expressed their shared views of immigration. Click for slideshow

A series of stop-motion animation videos created collaboratively by groups of students at Flushing International High School in Queens is a uniquely creative exploration of the theme of transportation, particularly as it relates to immigration. An activity that many of the participating schools used was "The Journey is the Destination: A Field Trip on the Subway." Each class rode the 7 train across the city from one end, 42nd Street Times Square in Manhattan, to the other end, Flushing-Main Street in Queens. This train line has been dubbed the "International Express," because of all the various ethnic neighborhoods it connects. With the sub-theme of transportation, these students, all of whom were born outside the United States, were placed in diverse groups and set out to create a short animated film that expressed their shared views of immigration. Sharing their own experiences, they easily saw the similarities and differences, validated each other’s insecurities and challenges, and celebrated their shared strategies for survival. Diana, a gentle-voiced 17-year-old from Colombia, gold butterfly earrings swaying against her cheeks, reveals, "Some [of my classmates] were illegal and they had to cross the desert and that was new — I didn't know about that. I was like — they're my classmates for like two years and I never knew that."

A teenage boy from China who barely speaks English, a girl from Bangladesh and a girl from Colombia sat together in an art classroom in Queens and cut and pasted and painted and doodled and used their fingers and cameras and computers to sculpt a collective story that reflects the journeys each of them have traveled to the United States. "Communication was really hard," Diana admits. "But in visual art, you could see it. So I could draw the ideas and, because he saw it, he didn't need to worry about translating."

Their project includes a beautifully painted backdrop of mountains, roads and an urban landscape. They created avatar-like images representing each of them as they crafted an animated story of three teenagers from different places who meet in a city, then choose to leave it behind and venture into the wild. "We made it so all our stories come together at one point," Diana explains. Appropriately and quite metaphorically, the site that the teens chose to meet in the city is Starbucks! An interesting and somewhat haunting image, leading me to see that through the effects of corporate globalization, "Starbucks" becomes a familiar brand that reminds the youth in some way of their home countries — where Starbucks was infiltrating their communities and yet also represents "America" to them.

The Performance Bond

In the art gallery, the creative energy was contained within the two dimensional images vibrating on the walls and the sculptural pieces on the floor; but in the theater, the stories erupted from the voices and bodies of the young performers. Victoria Restler spoke passionately about the power of performance at the "Jam Session," an afternoon in January when approximately 200 of the World Savvy youth participants from throughout the city met each other and created art together. "Specifically, the groups doing performance really bonded in the space of two hours," she said.

Getting onstage in front of their peers was a really strong bonding experience and I found that there were students connecting across cultural lines from different boroughs. The Jam Session this year really confirmed for me that, in terms of community building, the power of performance works. And our plan next year is to have all the groups do performance projects. Some of the visual projects were really powerful, but it's a very inward — very personal — inward focus rather than doing the kind of community building that we hope for on that day.

Her words are proven true at the final World Savvy Global Youth Media and Arts Festival in June at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. At this inspiring event, nine performances are presented, ranging from choral, spoken-word collages to narrative-based naturalistic plays, testimonial-style monologue pieces, cultural dance and an amazingly talented 15-year-old boy from the Philippines playing Jimi Hendrix's “Star Spangled Banner” on his electric guitar. Seeing and hearing the young performers grapple with the issue of identity and immigration live before a community audience, we, the spectators, are invited more intimately into their experiences.

“You Think I’m Russia but I’m Poland”

You think I'm Russia but I'm Poland.
You think I'm 17 but I'm 14.
You think I'm depressed but I just like to wear black
You think I'm African American but I'm Haitian

These voiced misconceptions chanted and spoken by students at the International High School provide a poetic summation of the experiences reflected in many of the performance works. There is a longing, a visceral hunger, a demand for respect and understanding for the diverse identities of the youth. I am reminded of Vivia's words to me a few days earlier,

They might look at you as an immigrant, but that's not necessarily who you are. People need to stop looking at what they see on the outside and what they hear being talked about in the media. We need to stop being all straightforward because there's more than meets the eyes. Like seriously.

The theater can be a space where youth can challenge and subvert the stereotypes associated with how they look, how they speak and where they come from. One of the strongest performances was conceived at Bronx Theater High School in the classroom of an inspirational teacher, Elizabeth Dunnes-Ruiz, who took a risk and trusted Samantha, a 17-year-old high-school junior to facilitate the classes, co-write an original play and direct the performance. Samantha, an intensely intelligent young immigrant from Jamaica with a wide smile, attended the World Savvy professional-development day for teachers and shared first-hand experiential knowledge of the themes with her fellow students. Dunnes-Ruiz told me,

I've been [teaching] for nine years and oftentimes you get sort of bored of doing the same stuff over and over again, and bringing [World Savvy's curriculum] in was really exciting. I gave Samantha the curriculum guide and asked her, “Which lessons do you want to do? Which workshops do you think your peers would respond to?”

Samantha went on to lead her peers to write a creative and innovative play, "The Migration Train." This magical play presented a mythical train ride through various "stops" along the path of immigration:

Conductor: This is Assimilation Boulevard. Transfer here for Racism and Prejudice.           

Passerby: Miss, you dropped something. (Hands her passport to Alta.)

Altagracia:. Gracias.

Buchanan: (talking over Altagracia) Thank you so very much, sir. I’m sorry you had to retrieve my wife’s passport! (Whispering to Alta) That should have been in your purse! Sometimes Altergracia....I swear... If you don’t start behaving I’m gonna ship you back to your papi and mami...Back to Mexico, you wanna go back to that Maquiladora?

Altagracia: The United States. Where one comes for work to feed the family. Or where one comes to work at a marriage, so that one can feed one’s family. Who am I kidding? I don’t love him, and it’s clear that he doesn’t love me. But he’s... Rich and he can give you a good life. You’re beautiful and young. According to my aunt. The one who got the bright idea that I should come here in the first place. And now I’m here in this unknown world. I feel like an Alien! Like I don’t belong. And it doesn’t help that he wants me to forget every bit of who I am. If forgetting who I am, the Taino, the beautiful Mexican woman that I am, is the only way to fit in and get my American dream... Then it’ll just have to be another dream crushed. Another American dream crushed.

Fear of Stereotypes

"The Migration Train" deals with the pains and horrors that erupt from stereotypes and prejudice. I was interested in how these themes could be addressed safely and productively and educationally in public-school classrooms. Dunnes-Ruiz gives Samantha most of the credit:

I think that one thing that Samantha said [was] how [immigration] is a sensitive subject and I think it's an interesting position as the authority figure and being of a different ethnicity than all of your students. [Ms. Dunnes-Ruiz is a white teacher in a school where almost all the students are youth of color]. Oftentimes, because of the society that we live in, teachers become very fearful of bringing up subjects that are, um, sensitive and I think that the World Savvy curriculum guide did a very good job of taking that fear away and the students really responded well, as they do with any opportunity to use their prior knowledge and their personal experiences and to create something. My fear came from people using stereotypes to motivate their work, and how to then address that. If someone did make a stereotypical or racist or homophobic remark in talking about other people's cultures, I was fearful of how I would respond to that and where it would lead. Although it could eventually lead somewhere positive — you know you only got 40 minutes and if something starts and then the bell rings, then you might have created a worse situation than if you haven't brought it up at all. However I was very pleased with Samantha's leadership in the classroom and how the students knew that that wasn't going to be ok.

When asked how theater as an art form can challenge stereotypes and present strong messages that could inspire positive social change, Samantha said,

It's more real when you see it in theater form. You can connect better. Certain characters convey a certain message and you always remember that character and what his or her objectives were and that'll just inspire you to want to learn more and research and want to make a difference and do something with the situation.

Her classmate, actor, writer and director Kadeem, chimes in,

— because when you actually see it going on, it's more than preaching or talking about it. When you see it with your own eyes, it's more vivid, it's more — you feel more sympathetic with it, you have more empathy with it, you feel it more. It really touches your soul.

The Strongest Girl You’ll Ever See

The World Savvy performances were definitely vivid! But as the visual arts work tiptoed up to the border between personal story and distanced narrative, there were a couple wincing moments when I wondered how close to this line it was "safe" to dance. But when we ask a teenager, "Who are you?" we need to be prepared for — and supportive of — the responses.

Buried within the eclectic evening of Brazilian hip-hop and a play about gentrification is a story that a young woman tells about a memory of violence in her past. She stands at a microphone suppressing tears, her voice quivering as she speaks about being raped by an older cousin, and her family's silence. Within the context of other stories about name-calling, racism and difference, this story hangs in the air like the San Francisco fog, chilling my bones and clouding my vision. She epilogues her horror with the rallying cry, "I'll fight for justice. I'll tell my story. I'm the strongest girl you'll ever see!"

The audience's immediate roar of applause seems to provide her with the support and validation she needs, though I question the placement of this vignette within the World Savvy evening. It brings up the salient and necessary issues that educators and community artists must constantly negotiate as we work with young people, guiding them to share their stories. I prefer the fictionalized characters of "The Migration Train" or the choral poetry of "I Am Not Who You Think I Am." The lens of character or the veil of heightened language can actually help the audience really hear the stories of identity, discrimination and pain more than the unmasked and vulnerable simplicity of a lone child telling her story.

In their wondrous array of diverse visual arts and performance projects, World Savvy has confidently succeeded in proving that there is a vital role for the arts in global education. The creative exploration of the themes of immigration and identity provided New York City youth with an opportunity to dive in deeply to discuss, learn about, challenge and strategize solutions for the struggles of immigrants — and of adolescents — in our globalized modern world. Kadeem reflected,

I'm so used to just the traditional black-and white-and the old conflicts that come up. But when you have a lot of different people and a lot of different ethnicities from different areas and different places, different ideas come up and different backgrounds and everybody wants to tell their story and I think that's what World Savvy brings — it's like a microphone. It lets everybody just voice their opinions, what they feel, what comes up in their communities and everything.

"Marcha Soldado!" The summer evening culminates with Eli Efi and DJ Laylo, an energetic Brazilian hip-hop duo rallying the audience to sing a call-and-response. Everyone leaps up to dance and shout back. We are all singing together, swaying together, dancing in the aisles together, clapping together in a language most of us do not know.

Dana Edell is the co-founder and executive director of viBe Theater Experience, a performing arts/education organization dedicated to empowering underserved teenage girls through writing and performing original, collaborative theater and music. She teaches as an adjunct in the Theatre Department at Marymount Manhattan College and with the Bard College Prison Initiative at Bayview Women's Prison. Edell is currently working on her Ph.D. in Educational Theatre at New York University.

Original CAN/API publication: August 2008