Susan Cervantes, Precita Eyes founder, looks back on the start of the Youth Urban Arts Festival, 25 years ago.
The 2021 version will be held on July 17, from 1 to 5 pm, at Precita Park.
"So Many Young People Have Been Transformed by Our Work."
The 2021 version will be held on July 17, from 1 to 5 pm, at Precita Park.
"So Many Young People Have Been Transformed by Our Work."
"We had our first Urban Youth Arts festival 25 years ago, in 1996. We held it inside, at the Precita Valley Community Center, because the graffiti writers worried about being recognized. Kids were still being criminalized for just having a marker in their pocket. They didn't want to be so public or visible, or they'd get turned in.
Our first festival featured a panel discussion with all the best writers in the city: Dream, and Spy, and Estria, and Crayon, all those guys. We had sheets and sheets of butcher paper all over the gym.. We must have had 200 kids inside, all tagging and sharing and drawing in each other's books.
Eventually, we decided to have it outside. So we made it into a tight little maze in Precita Park. You couldn't see from the outside what was going on inside. We provided the spray paint. The younger kids had to register in our Urban Youth Arts class in order to get a can of spray paint, because you couldn't have a can unless you were over 18 years old.
Each year, the maze got bigger and bigger, until it spread out all across the park. Hundreds of young people would participate. We began adding other activities — rapping, and Youth Speaks, and Loco Bloco, and bands and dancers, great performances. And activities for little kids. And walls for community painting, so people could brush paint the traditional way, too.
Last year, the festival was held online, with virtual workshops and performances via Zoom. And yet more than a thousand people tuned in. It was a two-day program with participants from dozens of countries, plus all the old-school graffiti writers from San Francisco.
Our festival and the Urban Youth Arts program has been impactful. So many young people have been transformed by our work. Of course, you don't always know that when you're doing it. But then you see the changes in people, and how they evolve, and the impact it has when they can work together and create something beautiful and different together."
— Excerpt from a February 2021 interview with Susan by her son Luz de Verano, posted here (around minute 8.)
Our first festival featured a panel discussion with all the best writers in the city: Dream, and Spy, and Estria, and Crayon, all those guys. We had sheets and sheets of butcher paper all over the gym.. We must have had 200 kids inside, all tagging and sharing and drawing in each other's books.
Eventually, we decided to have it outside. So we made it into a tight little maze in Precita Park. You couldn't see from the outside what was going on inside. We provided the spray paint. The younger kids had to register in our Urban Youth Arts class in order to get a can of spray paint, because you couldn't have a can unless you were over 18 years old.
Each year, the maze got bigger and bigger, until it spread out all across the park. Hundreds of young people would participate. We began adding other activities — rapping, and Youth Speaks, and Loco Bloco, and bands and dancers, great performances. And activities for little kids. And walls for community painting, so people could brush paint the traditional way, too.
Last year, the festival was held online, with virtual workshops and performances via Zoom. And yet more than a thousand people tuned in. It was a two-day program with participants from dozens of countries, plus all the old-school graffiti writers from San Francisco.
Our festival and the Urban Youth Arts program has been impactful. So many young people have been transformed by our work. Of course, you don't always know that when you're doing it. But then you see the changes in people, and how they evolve, and the impact it has when they can work together and create something beautiful and different together."
— Excerpt from a February 2021 interview with Susan by her son Luz de Verano, posted here (around minute 8.)
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