World Youth Project

Two days a week I teach a T-Shirt design after-school program at Grand Street Academy in Bushwick/Williamsburg. Here students create their own t-shirt brand which includes branding, marketing, promotion, production and selling of their own line of t-shirts which they design. Its a dope program with a bunch of dope students who I am really trying to educate about being entrepreneurs and owning they own businesses. Which is what I think is lacking in today's education system. There is too much focus on getting our youth to work for big companies and corporations.

I always refer to this Sam Greenlee quote who made "the Spook who sat by the door". In an interview he was talking bout minorities begging for crumbs off the white man's table and he said

"We ought to be about building our own tables and baking our own bread!"

That's is quote I live by and tell all my students. We need to OWN more. If we owned more I really believe we wouldn't be affected by this recessions and pseudo depression era.

We are on our second round of designs and this past week I did a photo shoot for my students. They designed and printed t-shirts around the theme of "My World". Photos are for ads and creating a online store with all the products they produced this semester.

Check out more photos on my Flickr

Supported by Urban Arts Partnership and the Leadership Program.

www.UrbanArts.org