Art plays a major role in helping people to make sense of their worlds. With this in mind, we have incorporated art as part of Suspension Stories from the very beginning of the project.
On July 31st, over a dozen young people came together at Alternatives Inc. for an afternoon of discussion and art-making. The event called “Representing the Pipeline” provided those in attendance with an opportunity to discuss and reflect on the role of harsh disciplinary policies in pushing youth out of school and potentially into prisons.
Youth Make Art at Representing Pipeline Event (7-31-10)
We have included the work that was created by the young people on this site. We think that you will be as impressed by what they created as we are.
Next we decided that it would be important to create a popular education tool that could be used to help youth and adults understand the impact of harsh school disciplinary policies on students’ educational outcomes. We reached out to our ally Billy Dee to commission a one-page comic that would illustrate the school to prison pipeline. Billy met with YWAT leadership core member and project coordinator Lillian Matanmi to discuss ideas and the result is Sent Down the Drain. We are incredibly proud of this tool and have created a set of discussion questions to accompany the comic. We can’t thank Billy enough for the support and generosity of spirit!
Poster by Caitlin Ostrow-Seidler
Finally, we would also like to thank the supremely talented educator and artitst Caitlin Ostrow-Seidler for creating a terrific poster to commemorate this project!
