Creative Youth Development – Creative Minds Out Loud

Episode 114: Reflecting the Community in Art Spaces

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In late 2019, we spoke to Doneeca Thurston, the newly-named Director of Lynn Museum/Lynn Arts. The 29-year-old Lynn native said her new role felt like a homecoming. She shares her vision for how the museum can be a champion for its majority minority community and ensure that local artists feel respected and celebrated.

Doneeca Thurston (Image by Christopher Padgett / Citizen Salem) Doneeca Thurston is currently the Director of Lynn Museum/LynnArts, located in the heart of the Downtown Lynn Cultural District. A Lynn-native, a lot of her efforts are focused on community-centered initiatives, committed to making Lynn Museum/LynnArts’ spaces more inclusive, accessible, and visible to all.

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Episode 107: Youth Workforce Development in Creative Industries

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Kim Dawson is the Director of Advancement at ZUMIX, a venerable creative youth development organization in East Boston. ZUMIX works with a largely immigrant community to better equip its youth to be able to navigate the world once they have graduated out of ZUMIX and high school. Dawson shares how they are expanding their opportunities for workforce development to help youth gain the skills they need to be paid well to do something they really love.

Kim Dawson is an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration in the Music Business/Management Department at Berklee College of Music and the Director of Advancement at ZUMIX. Kim has been working in the nonprofit sector as an artist, educator, administrator, and humanitarian for over 15 years.

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Episode 99: Art is a Humanizing Process

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Marquis Victor is the Founding Executive Director of Elevated Thought, a creative youth development nonprofit in Lawrence, MA. He believes that art is a form of liberation, and that young people – once they have access and exposure to art – are able to build a foundation of self, expand their minds and eyes to identify issues in their communities, and use art to surface creative solutions for those issues.

Marquis Victor is the Founding Executive Director of Elevated Thought. He leads ET’s vision, objectives, goals, and mission and manages ET’s contracts, commissions, and partnerships.

In addition to being a poet, designer, and photographer, Marquis has a master’s degree in Education from Lesley University and has taught in Revere and Boston, MA Public Schools.

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Episode 92: Youth Voice Transforms a Neighborhood

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Celina Miranda, Executive Director of Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF), discusses the integral role of young people in the creation of Boston’s Latin Quarter Cultural District. She says that HSTF youth were compelled to speak up about the importance of having a place to call home and a place that recognizes their strengths and assets. The voices of these young people were powerful and central in the transformation of their neighborhood.

Celina Miranda is Executive Director of Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF), a youth development organization located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Before joining HSTF in August of 2016, she was senior program officer at the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, where she managed grants in education and economic mobility.

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Episode 87: There’s the Intent and There’s the Impact

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Lecolion Washington, CEO and Executive Director of the Community Music Center of Boston, discusses some of the barriers to seeing more diversity in symphony orchestras across America, what systemic change takes, and how to create an organizational culture that is success-based, not deficit-based.

Lecolion Washington, CEO/Executive Director of the Community Music Center of Boston. M.M. Manhattan School of Music, B.M. University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Washington has established himself as a leader for the next generation of arts entrepreneurs, and he has been a staunch advocate for the relevance of music as an agent for social change.

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