Photo Friday: Creative Solutions

Last week, Big Thought's Creative Solutions program ended its seven-week summer program with an original play Super Solutions. The play - a comedy that featuring five super heroes who step in to guide teens to take the right path in life - was written, choreographed and performed by the nearly 50 teens in the program with the support of a team of teaching artists.

The incredible team of adults who worked with the teens included Camille Haley, Will Richey, Alejandro Perez, Marques Phillips, Allison Caldwell, Mario Garcia, Tom Gelo, Jeffrey Moffitt, James Justinic, Aneesha Kudtarkar, Jonathan Tyler, Catherine Hopkins and Lisa Schmidt! 

A huge shout out to the following:

• SMU Meadows School of the Arts for hosting the program at their campus for five years!
• Olive Garden for catering the opening performance luncheon for 100 people and providing "Lasagna Fridays" to the 50 teens for five years!
• Embrey Family Foundation, Dallas Association of Young Lawyers and National Endowment for the Arts for supporting Big Thought's Creative Solutions program
• The Dallas County Juvenile Department for partnering with Big Thought for 18 years so that together we can show the at-risk teens that where they have been does not determine who they can become. 

Photo Friday!

Time for another Photo Friday! Today's slideshow: Creative Solutions summer '09 students performing at Thanksgiving Square.

Intern Stephanie checks out the Creative Solutions dress rehearsal!

August 5, 2009
I got to see the dress rehearsal for the Creative Solutions today. I was so excited to see it all come together after sitting through some rehearsals and talking with the kids throughout the program. While there were still a few kinks to work out in the performance and not all of the art was up in the gallery, you can definitely see all the hard work that went into pulling these off.The performance, which is called “The Switch,” showcases all different kinds of talent: dancing, percussion, spoken word poetry, acting, singing. The kids really can do it all. Six of the kids played “angels” and “demons” and they stole the show with their hilarious performance! I was also blown away by the spoken word poetry that was performed. The way that the kids talk about their own lives and the way that they’re channeling their experience into performance is powerful.

The visual art is equally impressive. After spending a couple days in the gallery helping to hang some of the pieces, I actually took the time to step back and really look at the pieces. There's glass work, ceramics, charcoal, watercolor, and acrylic work – a little bit of everything. One of the coolest pieces was a group project of a tiger. It’s an amazing stippling project that took a week to create and the artists were so excited to tell us about their work and how everything was created. Though they’re a little more reserved than some of the performers, you can see their talent and passion just as clearly.I know they’ll all do an amazing job at their first official performance tomorrow!

-Stephanie
ps - check out our mini CS videos at http://tinyurl.com/BTMovie! More to come...

Intern Stephanie checks out Creative Solutions

Hi! I’m Stephanie, a student at SMU that's interning here at Big Thought. Last week I had the opportunity to go visit Creative Solutions, a Big Thought program for at-risk teens. Here's what I saw!

For three days I helped a photographer (who currently serves as a Big Thought Board member) as she took portraits of all the kids in the program. I was absolutely blown away by these kids! Having the chance to interact with them and watch them have their pictures taken was amazing. Some of them had never had their portrait taken before! The kids came in two at a time and while one was having their picture taken, the other would crack jokes or make faces to make them laugh. You can just see their personalities shine through the photos and how they interacted with each other and with us. Some were very particular about how they looked in the pictures; others weren’t all that comfortable having a camera lens in their face. But the really amazing part about observing them was seeing that all their energy was going towards whatever project they were working on. Peeking in the visual art studio, hearing a student’s poem, or feeling the drumming from the percussion rehearsal just proved how creativity is really changing and challenging these kids. I can’t wait to attend their final show and see just how far they’ve come!

To give you a taste of what's going on behind the scenes over at SMU with the Creative Solutions students, I made some video clips of the dancers, the visual art kids and the percussion ensemble! Check them out at http://tinyurl.com/BTMovie/.

Stay tuned for more...
-Stephanie