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Arab-American Youth Leadership and
Cultural Initiative
Using video and other artistic media during afterschool programs in public schools and at summer camp, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture seeks to empower youth to examine, understand and appreciate their own heritage as they define and navigate their particular place and civic role within American society. Themes to date have included explorations of stereotypes, identity, and migration/immigration, with facilitation of subsequent sharing of the youths¹ explorations through public video screenings, cross-cultural discussions, and development of an accompanying curriculum supplement to the seven youth videos produced to date. This supplement will be available for distribution on CD and DVD to secondary schools in 2007.
From 2003 through 2006, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture supported an after-school program for Arab-American students. With the volunteer support of various educators, artists, professionals and graduate students in the Arab-American community, we helped students at a public high school in Philadelphia form an afterschool Arab-American student club. During weekly meetings students worked collectively to share their knowledge, experiences and stories. We sought to have students conduct oral histories of their country of origin and explore their stories and experiences through the arts -- photography, video art, music, dance and literary expression -- in order to be able to share their discoveries and understandings with other students, teachers and the larger Philadelphia community. Through grant funding from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts¹s Five County Arts Fund, we retained video artist Laureen Griffin to work with the students, using video as a medium through which to explore aspects of their identity, which resulted in the following videos: Misunderstanding, Mendeel, and A Day in our Life.
A video program, taught by Palestinian filmmaker and media educator Dahna Abourahme, was introduced at Al-Bustan Camp in 2005 for participating counselors ranging from middle-school to post-college. Through daily half-day video sessions, students explored countering stereotypical images of Arabs and Arab Americans and personal reflections on the history of immigration and migration in American, collectively producing the following videos over the past two summers: Ditch the Frame, So Cool..., Being American for Dummies, and Border Ballads. In 2007, a teen program is introduced at Al-Bustan Camp, providing students 13 to 18 years an opportunity to participate in a full-day program of video, drama, music and Arabic language instruction.
Click here to see some photos.
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