Street Poets Inc

In collaboration with arts for healing & justice network (ahjn), street poets led weekly and one-time poetry-writing and music recording workshops at and with los angeles county probation department and community sites/platforms, including: dorothy kirby center, barry j. Nidorf juvenile hall, san fernando valley family clinic, and los padrinos juvenile hall. We also facilitated creative well-beings for the arts for healing justice network and events sites such as the california foster youth education summit - providing training and facilitation for educators and partners servicing probationary youth. In all, we serviced 75-100 youth incarcerated, on probation, or a at-risk of incarceration aged 13-25.street poets collaborated with arts for healing justice network for the "imaging freedom" full week retreat in tuscaloosa, alabama, creating a space for previously incarcerated and system-impacted youth from la for healing, freedom-dreaming, and transformation. Through a trip to the national memorial for peace and justice and the legacy museum in montgomery, the civil rights justice institute and the 16th st church in birmingham, and a four day gathering at the university of alabama.

Our music program offered 34 weekly virtual "beats & rhymes drop-in, music-making workshops throughout the year for youth and young adults, ages 13-25, serving a group of about 15 participants. In addition, we continued our internship program, onboarding 2 selected cohort of 10 total youth to attend, actively-participate in, and acquire skills from, one-on-one sessions with master/professional artists who could provide insight and workshopping about the music and recording industry, as well as weekly music and writing programming. All of our participants, including interns, participate in educational and arts excursion activities, as well as public performance opportunities such as our "sp presents" monthly open mic, where participants have hosted, dj'd, performed on stage and learned additional skills in events and performance arts. Youth and young adults were able to experience an in-depth curriculum, covering areas that included music production, beatmaking, musical engineering, writing, performance, recording and production. Many of the participants from both the drop-in "beats & rhymes" program and the internship program helped produce, write, perform and record for the original, street poets hip-hop and spoken word album entitled "letters from la."in addition, we collaborated with two other organizations (jail guitar doors and give a beat) to provide twice-a-week, additional music recording and production programming to young adults through a program called "fresh tracks," serving an average of 15 system-impacted or at-risk young adults in the west hollywood location of the city - learning in a state of the art studio with artist such as the legendary, wayne kramer.

Seeking peace:we facilitated 44 hybrid (virtual and in-person) "seeking peace" poetry & meditation workshops via zoom and the street poets office throughout the year, serving an average attendance of 10-20 youth and young adult participants weekly.in addition, we facilitated a "seeking peace outside!" session at reuben ingold park with love source l.a.open mic/street poets presents & dj sessions:we hosted 9 in-person community open-mic events and public poetry readings/interviews over the course of the year. These events were held at various partner sites, including pieter performance space, la plaza de cultura y artes, emerson college, and art share-la in the downtown los angeles arts district, averaging 45 attendees at each. Our featured artists at each event were well-established, professional poets and performers from across the country; and our audience spanned from students to alumni, to their families, street poets supporters, and beyond. These events offer the youth in our community an opportunity to have their voices and creativity heard, as well as be exposed to poets and other professional artists.other special collaborations included:we partnered with youth mentoring connection for our 2, annual youth retreats at big bear lake - a young women's and non-binary youth retreat and a young men's retreat. In addition, street poets and youth mentoring connection collaborated for a total of 4 monthly poetry workshops for an average group of 20 youth and young adults, as well as a "voices in motion" poetry and drumming event held at youth mentoring connection for a crowd of about 30 youth and adult participants.we collaborated with unlikely collaborators for the unlikely collaborators summit, the intuitive leadership professional development course, and the moth community workshop.we also hosted 2 international delegations via the international citizen diplomacy of los angeles - one from ecuador and another from azerbaijan.other community workshops:street poets facilitated additional, one-off and short-series performances and workshops, including our poetry and gardening program, which we facilitated at metropolitan high school, along with a special workshop offering at one of our monthly open mics.our professional development sessions, through our partnership with ahjn, with los padrinos juvenile hall, dexter middle school in whittier, and department of arts and culture, serving both youth and adults virtually and in person. Through these programs, street poets reached over 400 additional youth and adults.street poets also participated in conferences, convenings and invites to speak and present, including a "commission on hiv: 2025 consumer resource fair" hosted by the los angeles county commission on hiv caucasus, aspen opportunity youth forum convening hosted by l.a. Opportunity youth collaborative, justice and art jam organized by la freewaves, and pen america world voices festival.we mentored (by phone, texting, conference platforms such as zoom, and in person) a dozen or so current and former students, while maintaining regular email and social media contact with a dedicated network of over a hundred students and alumni and supporters.