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Students at the Point Breeze Performing Arts Center showed they’ve got plenty of moves — not to mention potential — during last weekend’s social arts performance at the Marian Anderson Recreation Center.
June 23, inside the playground’s auditorium at 740 S. 17th St., the kids took to the stage for the capstone to the center’s first annual weeklong celebration of "Community-Building Through the Arts." Earlier in the week, evening workshops were held on stress management and community folklore — both aimed at raising the public’s awareness about the importance of social change through the arts.
Planning and rehearsing for Saturday’s performance began in January involving the 28 members of the center’s Greater Grays Ferry after-school program. Through music, dialogue and dance, the children presented the audience with real-life solutions to combat city violence.
"Instead of doing a regular show like everyone else, let’s do something that’s solution-based," the center’s Assistant Site Director Jeannine Cook said of the event’s impetus. "Everything we do at Point Breeze is along the lines of changing our community for the better."
The after-school class functioned as the setting for the two-hour skit, which featured an initially arrogant reporter — played by head counselor Francisco Baldwin-Tejeda — who arrived with the preconceived notion children could be of no help to his story on inner-city violence. Through hip-hop and jazz numbers, along with a slideshow depicting what happens every time a child is killed (some participants played victims clutching posters with their dreams written on it), the journalist was proven wrong.
Positive attitudes and words, effective communication, listening and the four F’s — facts, feelings, functions and faith — were some aspects the kids presented as ways to stifle the growing violence. The latter motto referred to the decision-making process present in the after-school program’s curriculum.
Cook, who helped coordinate the event with other staff members, said the message this year was not to solve violence on a widespread scale, but to make residents aware of how they can help on a local level.
"If you can get to those small issues before they turn into the big issues, you won’t have to be dealing with the harsh effects of violence so much," the resident of the 1300 block of Hicks Street said.
Located in an area where gun shootings and crime are all too familiar, the center at 1717-21 Point Breeze Ave. has been dedicated since 1984 to fostering positive community interaction and cultivating budding talent through its "arts for social change" mission. The center incorporates this philosophy into its after-school curriculum, which aims to equip youngsters with the skills needed to overcome social and economic challenges.
"I [didn’t] want art for art’s sake," site Director Rev. Nia Eubanks-Dixon said of why she and her colleagues organized the event. "I wanted it to be where art and life skills worked simultaneously together."
While the children were certainly in the spotlight with Saturday’s show, the week’s workshops allowed adults to experience the benefits of community-building, as well.
"A lot of parents [needed] to come to those workshops and learn how to de-stress," Claudette Boyd, a participant in the stress-management and folklore workshops, said. The resident of the 2300 block of Mifflin Street added she now knows "how to take 15-minute breaks when I get home from work. Just give me 15 minutes and then I’ll take time for my family."
Boyd also came to Saturday’s show to watch daughter Tamika on stage. The resident said the social arts program has helped her child be more respectful, observing manners such as not interrupting others.
Fellow stars from Saturday’s show said the experience prompted a change in them, as well.
"If someone told me they needed me to do something, I would just flip out. Now, I just do it," Malik Burrell, a soon-to-be fifth-grader at Chester A. Arthur School, said. Saturday, he helped coax the journalist to join in on the hip-hop fun — and interview all 28 children for his article — during the skit’s final scene.
Ivory Witherspoon, who will enter fifth grade at Vare Elementary, said the after-school curriculum, which also focused on creative writing and proper nutrition, helped improve her attitude.
"I learned how to be respectful and how to get along with others," she said.
Judging from the enthusiasm of the performers and the more than 60 audience members, the staff thinks the program will definitely make a return visit. And next year, the center hopes even more community members will show up to see just how much promise South Philly’s next generation has.
"The children are our future," Baldwin-Tejeda said. "These are the children who, in five, 10 years, can make our world better or worse. We need to make sure we give them the tools to make sure they bring us one step closer to being in a better place to live in."
