Youth Stories, The Art of Zine

Download PDF: click here

This is a zine I discovered about juvenile justice from Project NIA, a community collaborative that aims to think about restorative or transformative justice in unique and creative ways. Recently, I started collaborating online with several volunteer artists through Volunteer Match for our Art of Voices project.  I'm interested in taking some time to read and think about how groups are using art to build dialogue around issues related to juvenile justice.  Project NIA collaborated with the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and the Chicago Freedom School to put together three digital zines about juvenile justice.  Reading further into the project I learned a lot about other collaborations with the justice system and educators that made this zine publication possible.

'Youth Stories' by Elgin Smith is the first of those zines I've downloaded to read this week.  The site where you can download the PDF is linked above.  I first heard about "zines" from a colleague who talked about how she use to put them together back in the 80s and mail them at the post office.  A lot of the content in her zines had to do with music and the punk scene.  The way she made it sound it reminded me of how someone would put together a scrapbook.  During my years volunteering in juvenile prison, I long thought about creative and time effective ways that I could help incarcerated youth present their writing and art to people outside of the prison.  I was heavily inspired by how The Beat Within published the poetry and stories of incarcerated youth and adults.  Zines on the other hand remind me of how a person would approach a scrap book, which I've always wanted to explore since it seems to offer a bit more creative control with the participants, especially in its design.  In the workshops I facilitated we mainly focused on the process of recording voice and music to put together mixtapes, so I ended up collecting a ton of audio and video.  There was still a lot that was documented in writing though and I've always wanted to put together in a creative way that could be accessed as download.

I look forward to reading the zine 'Youth Stories' to learn how the groups involved got together to collaborate with the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) for the zine publication.  Its an important model for thinking about how community and juvenile justice systems can work together in a way that is creative and that engages the voices of justice involved youth. 

Here is a quote from the Project NIA Director, Mariame Kaba... "I am committed to using art as a tool for social transformation and justice.  I believe that art has the capacity to speak across difference and to help educate and incite people to action."

reading... "Tell Me a Story"

Project NIA
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Chicago Freedom School
Rachel Marie Crane-Williams
Elgin-Bokari T. Smith
Teresa Smith
Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC)
Billy Dee
Chicago PIC Teaching Collective
Mariame Kaba