School may be out for summer, but young people at AS220 Youth aren’t taking a break from learning life, business, and creative skills. Youth’s Summer Jobs program is in full swing with 80 young artists and creatives enrolled. I caught up with Janay Pina, AS220’s Director of Programs, to get the details.
How is AS220 Youth’s Summer Jobs program different from the rest of the year?
JP: Our Summer Jobs program is a five-week intensive. We’re with our young people 20 hours a week, Monday through Thursday, 10am to 3pm, as opposed to maybe 10 to 16 hours during the school year. During the summer, we’re more focused on entrepreneurship and workforce skills; about our young people entering the workforce and what they need to know. Talking about professionalism and certain things they need in order to be able to get a job and sustain it.
What’s your favorite thing that’s happened so far?
JP: Well, we’re only two weeks in, but something this year that’s a little different is we’re doing a Black Panther summer. We’re going back to AS220’s roots a little bit and learning more about social justice, civil rights, and specifically the Black Panther Party. We started doing research about Emory Douglas, a prominent visual artist who did work for the Black Panthers. He would do a lot of their posters, a lot of advertisement work. We had some of our young people create their own Black Panther posters, which was really, really dope. I didn’t know they’d be really into it, but they were actually really into it, and they came up with their own stuff.
Can you tell me EVERYTHING that’s being taught in these 5 weeks?
JP: We’re also teaching things like songwriting and performance, we have media classes and film photography, fashion, which is like sewing, screen printing, and digital design. We also have some creative writing and a book club this summer, which is really cool. What else… beatmaking, recording, dance – some hip-hop, Afrobeat, yoga. We have hair and makeup classes this summer as well. We’re trying to switch it up a little bit and really also think about building up their skills not just as professionals, but as artists as well. •