Napier Youth PhotoVoice Project
PhotoVoice is an intervention that aims to bring about positive social change for marginalized communities through providing them with photographic training with which they can advocate and express themselves. Currently, 10 students in the sixth through eighth grade who live in or around the J.C. Napier Homes—one of the oldest public housing developments in Nashville—are participating in a 10-week PhotoVoice program to document and dialogue about social issues in their community.
Approximately 75% of Napier residents live below the poverty line, and an increase in violent crime has been documented over recent years, which community members associate with an influx of residents and gangs from HOPE VI displacement. Most of the youth are bussed to a middle school outside their neighborhood and have a family member who is incarcerated.
The goals of the project are:
1. to empower youth by training them in documentary photography and systemic thinking,
2. to provide an outlet to express ideas that they may not express verbally, and
3. to increase their sense of agency by facilitating opportunities for them to communicate needed social change to the broader Nashville community.
The project is a collaboration between the Center for Community Studies, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee, the Nashville Civic Design Center and sponsored by the Gannett Foundation, Vanderbilt’s Center for Community Studies, Community Development Action program, the Department of Human & Organizational Development, and Gresham, Smith & Partners.
The youth’s social message and photography will be exhibited at the Nashville Civic Design Center from May 5-30, 2008. Please attend the public reception from 4:30-6:30 pm on May 8.
The Nashville Civic Design Center is located at 138 Second Avenue, North in downtown Nashville.
Here a few of the photos, along with explanations from the children as to why they took the photos, that you will see as a part of the PhotoVoice exhibit:
"Barred In" - Artianna, 6th grade
Youth discussed how there are so many bars in their neighborhood that it looks like a prison.
Sometimes the bars keep people out but sometimes they keep people in.
"Morning Leftovers" - Tatiana, 6th grade
The children discussed how people in their community will roll emptied out cigar casings
and fill them with drugs to smoke.
They see the remnants of illegal drugs stewn on the ground.
