Word On The Street | For youth. By youth.

Lee Walker Heights Homecoming Celebration

Lee Walker Heights is the oldest public housing community in Asheville, NC. The community was built in the 1950’s and is about to be renovated. Members of the community celebrated their history with food, games, music and speakers. Squad members from Word...

Self Portrait By Jay

Self Portrait by Jay

Children Working

When I came to El Salvador, I noticed a child walking in the middle of stopped traffic asking the people in the cars if they wanted their windshields cleaned. I thought he was alone, but his dad was on the side of the road watching him. He had...

Already out of this world

This painting represents drug influence by peers on someone who is already under the influence.

Body acceptance

This is a batik color watercolor painting of a girl's body in the background you can read that it says "love yourself and your body". Body positivity is very important to me and i created this art piece to represent it.

Girl in the red dress

I took this picture of myself then painted it making the color of the shirt red instead of the color it actually was (background color) to make it pop out.

What Remains

I do not have direct experience with police brutality, as I am a white female. However, it is an extremely important issue, and I see it affecting both my immediate community as well as the entire country. For this work, I collected news...

Photography by Layla Muktar

I took these all on a cell phone and have used edits to modify these original pictures in my life.

El Salvador

I can’t really remember the day well, but it was 2 years ago. In El Salvador, I studied communications. A career that I really like. In the career, we had to go to different places and take pictures of the best things we could find and write a...

Black Lives Matter

The purpose of my “Black Lives Matter” piece was to explain that I completely support this movement, considering that I am a young black woman. The picture is meant to show that we as black women (or African Americans as a whole) are deeper and...

Of Colors, of Mountain Faces

These drawings are composed of a pairing of color, ink, and line work. This echoes common themes that I find and learn from in my life, how opposites can enhance each other's differences. This mixing of forms and media brings me joy,...

Human

By Nevel Swain Hair, legs, feet, feeling , we have them right? But yet I get treated like the mud underneath your shoe. Nothing. Made fun of ‘cause of my clothes, my pants, but Ma always told me to love y’all Brothers look up to me I’m all they got. Growing up without...

SILENCE

By: Kaliyah I feel silenced when I’m the only black person in a class because I feel out of place so it makes me hesitate to raise my hand or ask questions and I just have to be so proper and it’s horrible because I feel like I’m nothing or like a small piece of...

Who Am I?

By: Melani Segovia I don’t know who I really am right now. I don’t know where I belong. My name is Melani, but I go by many different things. Sometimes, they call me “Edith’s daughter”, while other times, as “The New Girl that came from the USA”, and my MOST favorite...

Green and Red

By Awesome CC Green Green is my mother cause she keeps me alive day in and day out but that’s all about to change cause I’ve stripped her of her trees and oxygen calling her nothing but scam Making her time run out faster but before I simple just let her die Let me...

Love

By Awesome CC They say love comes from the heart but what they fail to see is that love also causes you pain but in so many ways it can make you stronger as a person Trust me For someone to hurt you any type of way you have to love them first and don’t think let's...

A Nation of Immigrants

By Melani Segovia These are different published pieces interwoven together to form a spoken word piece. I made this piece because it talks about immigration which is something that is really big in my life. I wanted to show people that immigrants migrated to the...

Violence

by Niobe Wright Violence is pain, Violence is not a game, People who use violence should be very ashamed. Violence can be used in many ways. People all around the world use violence just for some sort of pay. Violence is in our schools. To me that’s not cool. If you...

Dear World: A Letter

by Kaliyah and Amyah Dear World, We are writing this letter about how deportation impacted us and how we feel about this happening to others. In the U.S, deportation is a very big subject and a hard thing to go through especially if you weren't expecting it. One of...

Where i’m from: a community poem

By Cierra, Sharissa, Niobe, Samiya, Kaliyah, Sade, Serenity Where i’m from... the smell of my grandmother's fried chicken fills the air . Where i’m from...i see the mountains and I feel the cold air. Where i’m from... the heat from the heat from the summer day burns...

Marc Bamuthi Joseph: Poet and Dancer

By Serenity Lewis, Donovan Spencer, Melani Segovia Last summer, we got to interview an American Performer, Marc Bamuthi Joseph. He started his arts career at the age of 10, after acting in a lot of TV commercials. He was at his home when we spoke...

Meeting Ronald K. Brown: Dancer, Choreographer, Storyteller

By Melani Segovia, Jeanette Quitizaca, Dylan Spencer Evidence a Dance Company was founded by dancer Ronald K. Brown in 1985, and based in Brooklyn, New York.Their mission statement says, “ The mission of Evidence is to promote understanding of the human experience...

Childhood memories

Becoming We

What does it take to become we? To become we is to be united with one another, you have to forget hate, you have to understand the fact that there’s a system against all of us not just a single person. And see life in a shade of positivity, even though...

My childhood poem

Bless me for holding on to my dreams and never letting them go Bless me for remembering singing through the whole house and getting lost in the music Bless the tall,white,and blue house I spent most of my life Remembering the time I fell in...

Different Stories, Different Voices

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Windows

In September we took off our socks stretched them out to dry in the lingering summer with barefeet I learned that body is a kind of currency how to spend this currency as a man, as a woman where I live there is an owl atop every building to scare all the...

Abuse is not love

Many people think domestic violence can’t and will never happen to them until it has escalated to where it is too late to receive help. Many do not even know the signs of an unhealthy relationship. You believe that you both argue because of something you...

Recurring Storms

Dana’s feet drag on the ground Her worn sneakers take steps without her Her confidence in fists She walks up the stairs To the dreary house The white picket fence He painted dark The grown out lawn The white carnations all are gone Washed away by storms...

My Experience in Lanzate 2016 with Mi Jente

Name of Conference: LANZATE 2016 The organizers of “Mi Jente” sent me an email about their gathering with different organizations in Puerto Rico, and they asked me if I was interested in going and experiencing that. I first thought I couldn’t...

(Untitled) By Marquise Mashburn

My soul predates the Egyptians smoking on this weed no prescription trying to elevate better pay attention im resonating at the frequency of the sun horus telling me keep elevating son your journey just have begun gotta save humanity before shit gets worse...