NeON Arts Summer Showcase Celebrates Creative Work From Young People Across The City

On Thursday, September 6 at 6:00 p.m., youth from across New York City will present original music, dance, poetry, visual art, and more in Carnegie Hall's Resnick Education Wing as part of the NeON Arts summer showcase. A program of the NYC Department of Probation (DOP) in partnership with Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, NeON Arts brings free arts programming to communities across the city. The final event will feature video footage from NeON Inspires, a youth-led conversation with hip-hop entrepreneur Kareem "Biggs" Burke that took place in June 2018, as well as original artwork from eight organizations that led creative projects for young people this spring and summer in the seven communities served by the DOP's Neighborhood Opportunity Networks:

Bedford-Stuyvesant: Fame Airbrush
Brownsville: Fame Airbrush, Free Verse
East New York: Fame Airbrush, Flex Program, Free Verse
Harlem: The International Child Program, Pneuma Ministries
Jamaica: Building Beats, Fame Airbrush
South Bronx: Fame Airbrush, Free Verse, The International Child Program
Staten Island: The Chris Owens Foundation, Green Earth Poets Café

Launched by DOP in spring 2014, NeON Arts celebrates youth, highlights creative talent, and develops the social and professional skills of all participating youth, preparing them for careers inside and outside the arts. Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute manages the grant-making process for NeON Arts, coordinating citywide events and working with arts organizations and stakeholders to ensure that each project is a collaboration that benefits the entire community.

Building Beats provides introductory music education lessons in DJ skills and music production to New York City youth. Lesson activities prompt and challenge students to develop personal, social and transferrable life skills. Students are introduced to the following music production topics: sampling, drum programming, analog and digital synthesizers, song structure and arrangement, remixing, sound engineering and project management.

The Chris S. Owens Foundation's Lights, Camera, Action! (LCA) Digital Arts Workshop Series is an interdisciplinary multimedia arts program that equips participants with skills in the film and television industry. Workshop components include creative writing, camera operation, directing, editing, and marketing. Participants use personal experiences as well as community and political issues to create content while expressing their creativity and encouraging social commentary.

Fame Airbrush introduces NeON Arts participants to the basics of airbrushing and painting, teaching students how to customize shirts, hats, headbands and sneakers while spreading positive messages in the community. Fame Airbrush also focuses on preparing future artists for entrepreneurship in the arts.

Free Verse is a workshop of poetry, story, art and song that turns waiting time into creative time. Born and bred in the South Bronx probation office waiting room, Free Verse brings together probation clients, friends, family, probation staff, probation officers, police, judges, community members, professional writers and artists every week to read and write poems, perform on an open mic, create art, and publish original work in the Free Verse Magazine.

The Flex Program is an arts education initiative founded in 2014 that fosters positive growth among young people through mentorship and dance. The New York-based program consists of two formats: the first, FlexIN, is a dance workshop provided in facilities such as secure detention centers and foster care settings; the second, FlexOUT, provides free dance and creative art workshops for high school students and youth at community centers.

Established in 2013, Green Earth Poets Café exists to promote performance, literacy, self-confidence, communication, community, and educational development among youth in New York City through performing arts. Green Earth assists in the development of performance artists and creative writers, and inspires, encourages, and empowers youth to discover their voice and express that voice poetically. Serving as a poetry and theater company, the organization provides urban community youth with the opportunity to create and share original poems through a "poetry slam" performance model and theatrical productions.

The International Child Program's (ICP) mission is to help youth and their communities gain cultural awareness and understanding of the people of many nations, while exploring new artistic interests, and recognizing the potential they have to contribute to the global society. ICP offers engaging, interactive workshops (including dance, music, theater, visual arts, filmmaking, and musical storytelling) led by talented and accomplished artistic professionals. ICP youth develop discipline and gain creative, marketable skills for their future. ICP is dedicated to changing lives through arts education.

Pneuma Ministries International is located in the Harlem community, and since 2010, has actively engaged in serving the global community through youth engagement. Pneuma's team is committed to reaching out in very nontraditional ways to men and women who are need of a loving embrace and a helping hand. This summer, the organization offered culinary arts classes to NeON Arts participants.

Photo Credit: Fadi Kheir