Art for Social Change - Gee's Bend!

Based on the success of the Art for Social Change workshop series last year, UCCP is proud to work with the Philadelphia Museum of Art again to host a series of workshops for young adults around Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt exhibit.

The series will consist of three wednesday sessions starting on October 22, 2008 exploring storytelling, music, writing and quilting while creating a space to think and talk about positive social change in our communities.

Spaces are still available for interested youth. For more information, please contact Catalina Gonzalez at catalia.gonzalez@temple.edu.

First Person Documentary Screening

On Thursday, September 25th, the UCCP welcomed over 150 people to a screening and discussion of FIRST PERSON, the award winning film directed by Ben Herold that documents the lives of six Philadelphia public high school students who aspire to attend college. Following the film, several members of the Leaders Corps joined Malikka Saeed, one of the six students featured in FIRST PERSON, and State Representative Curtis Thomas for a lively panel discussion of the factors that work against Philadelphia youth striving to realize their dreams of higher education. For more information on the film, please visit http://www.firstpersondocumentary.org.

Youth & Health

For the last three months, the UCCP has been working with youth from Students Run Philly Style, Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education Center, Teens 4 Good (Greater Philadelphia Federation of Settlements) and the Temple Youth VOICES Project to create and develop a youth initiative to promote health among youth and their communities. The youth are interested in developing a Youth Health Café, which they hope can become a place where youth from around the city can come to learn, share knowledge and participate in activities and workshops, all in the context of a healthy and safe environment. The project has also involved several Temple professors form the departments of Kinesiology and the Business school, graduate students in Public Health and medicine, undergraduate students and alumni.

Art for Social Change - A Women's Series

A touring exhibition devoted to the art of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from February 20 through May 18, 2008. Organized in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Kahlo's birth, it will present approximately fifty paintings from the beginning of her career in 1926 to the year of her death in 1954. The Frida Kahlo exhibition includes loans from over thirty private and institutional collections in the United States, Mexico, France, and Japan, several of which have never been on public view in the United States. Frida Kahlo is the first major presentation of the Mexican artist's works in the United States in nearly fifteen years.

Given the importance of this exhibit and fundamental role of art in society, the Temple Youth VOICES project was more than excited when the opportunity presented itself to collaborate with the Philadelphia Museum of Art in creating a group of young women to participate in art workshops and discussions about identity and the role of women in society.

This group will meet twice a week from January 15th through February 7th at Temple University. Art for Social Change - Women's Series will conclude on February 24th with a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for an exploration of the Frida Kahlo exhibit.The work produced by these young women in the context of our workshops will also be displayed at the museum and to make this project even more exciting, there is a proposal to create a mural which may include pieces of art created by them. The mural, which will be created by artist Cesar Viveros, will incorporate the ideas and concerns of these young women; in a perfect example of how art goes from the very personal -identity- to the very social -a mural in the city of Philadelphia.