On a sunny Saturday afternoon in August, Nick-a-Nees hosted the parking lot show dubbed, “Raise A Voice!” This community fundraiser for Youth Pride, Inc. (YPI), and New Urban Arts (NUA), featured the Papermoon Jazz Band, Mark Cutler, Pip and Paul, High Planes, The Whelks, Steve Donovan, Gary Cummings, Bob Mac and Austin Andrews, and the Jake Wasson Malpractice– all coming together to support the advocacy and person-centered services YPI and NUA.
Event producer Robert MacDonald (aka Bob Mac) shared that he and Mark Dobbyn (co-producer and member of the acoustic trio The Whelks) got together in what he described as “disbelief” and reflected on the ensuing “cruelty” and impact of the 2024 election results. They started to see “programs being cut” and they “wanted to identify a couple of after-school programs locally in Providence” ones that he himself has a personal connection to. “My daughter benefited from these programs when she was in high school during the pandemic,” he went on to say, “we wanted to make this more of a statement of hope, we don’t have to sit back and complain. I found that to be energy spent in chasing our tail, spinning in circles, being angry. Instead it’s about asking: What can we do? So when we talked to like-minded musicians who we were pretty confident had the same thoughts and positions as us, nobody hesitated, so we put this thing together.”
In addition to any donations obtained on site by the two local-nonprofits, 20% of the bar sales from the event went to the organizations (split evenly), and over twenty artists donated “their time and their talent” to this cause. Bob also “put together a collection” of his friends to play a “country set of left-leaning country artists.” He said, “they do exist although they’re in the minority. Believe it or not Johnny Cash would be very upset at the current climate, despite the handshake with Nixon.”
Diving more deeply into the two non-profits benefitting from this fundraiser, I discovered shared values between them. Started in December of 1992 as a support group for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Greater Rhode Island, the mission of Youth Pride, Inc. is “to meet the unique, ongoing needs of LGBTQIA2S+ youth and young adults through direct service, support, advocacy, and education.” Similarly, New Urban Arts (NUA) is “a welcoming community of high school students and adult mentors in Providence sharing space, skills, and resources to inspire creative expression” in a student-led, safe and empowering environment. Founded by artists in 1997, NUA is located in “occupied Pokanoket, Wampanoag, and Narragansett land.”
Speaking to volunteers and staff from the organizations painted an even more compelling picture of the reason why these services are vital. Cate Sanders (one of the volunteers providing information about Youth Pride during the event) explained that, although they specialize in working with youth from Providence and Rhode Island, they work with kids from Massachusetts and Connecticut as well. “We are a youth center located on 743 Westminster Street and we support youth ages 4 to 24, providing a variety of groups such as the ‘Little Unicorns’ for kids ages 5 to 9, the ‘Queer Gourmet’ cooking classes, an LGBTQIA+ and questioning discussion group called ‘the Way Out’ (in honor of the organization’s origins) and a D&D night,” he offers. They also have emergency services: clinical support, housing, food pantries and more. “If you want to support YPI,” said volunteer Turner Zimmermann, “we have our biggest fundraiser on October 23rd; it is our annual soiree fundraiser.” The theme of the gala is “Renaissance, whatever that means to you,” said Cate. It is mostly a volunteer-run organization with only 4 salaried staff members.
When asked why they’ve chosen to volunteer for YPI, Cate said, “I have a lot of friends and family who are in the LGBTQ community, and given the political climate and with how everything has been going nowadays, I am unable to financially support a lot of things but I can provide my time, which is almost as valuable. So I decided to volunteer for Youth Pride, because as they say in their motto, ‘no one should grow up invisible.’” Turner then shared, “For my part, as someone who is transgender looking to operate and thrive in this world, I want to be in a space where nobody has to wait to know that they are loved and that they are perfect just as they are, so I volunteer so that the youth of Providence get access to that space.”
New Urban Arts Development Director Yajaira Reyes spoke about NUA in much the same way. She described the organization as “an afterschool arts studio, working with high school students mostly in Providence. We work with students from all over Rhode Island; if they’re in high school they can access our space. We pair them with artist mentors, depending on what art medium they are excited about. We have all types of arts: screen printing, a dark room, a recording studio, sewing, basically any kind of art you can think of, and the students get to explore hands-on, whatever art form they want, free of charge. We also pair them up with mentors to help them figure out what it is they want to do after high school, and it doesn’t have to be college, it can be anything.” In addition to creative field mentors they also have “study buddies,” who are focused more on academics and tutoring.
When asked why she works at NUA, Yajaira said, “I grew up in Pawtucket and we really didn’t have access to arts, I don’t remember taking an art class and I think that was a real loss, so to have a space where students can access services because they’re not provided at the schools feels important.”
Listening to the performers that day, enjoying the diversity of sounds and people at Nick-a-Nee’s, I was struck by how much impact an idea can have when the driving force of this creative community comes together as active participants in finding solutions in times of uncertainty.
If you’d like to join in and support these organizations please go to: youthprideri.org and newurbanarts.org