I’m Not Ready to Die Yet: Engaging the Past, Present, and Future with Our Youth

Artist/Scholar Collaboration

Artists: Ellen Hagan, David Flores

Scholar Respondents: Stephanie Troutman

As teaching artists, we are called to create art and build curricula that encourage our students to both engage with the current state of the world as well as disrupt the status quo through their own art and activism. In this session, we will share poems and art installation videos that address and respond to the murders of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Walter Scott, the historical context of white supremacy via the murder of Emmett Till and others, as well as the wide range of responses through protest and art. We will share community building techniques, pedagogical strategies, prompts and ideas for group art making in response to current events in relation to our history of racial oppression. We will discuss ways in which our young people begin to take ownership over studying, distilling and creating poetry as a dialogue and response to police brutality and racial profiling.

*Title from a poem by Aracelis Girmay