The RYP Internship program offers students the opportunity to learn about historic and modern Roxbury history, and provides them two unique learning opportunities: learning digital and multimedia skills and organizing a community event.
1. Digital and Multimedia Skills
The RYP Internship uses social change and community past, present, and future to engage with a rich history of activism and organizing in Roxbury. Participants use creative multimedia-making and digital skills as tools to leverage social change and connect more deeply to their community and to themselves. This program will explore historical landmarks, public art, and community organizing efforts in Roxbury as a means of understanding important cultural issues.
Part of the internship?s curriculum includes lessons in photography and documenting the community, as well as exploring community organizing through photography. After, our students will also complete of two multi-media projects:
?How can history make us feel welcome in a public space??
Interns will photograph and document spaces in Roxbury and/or their own neighborhoods that make them feel welcome, seen, and celebrated. They will present in small groups after thinking critically about why these places make them feel that way and how photography can contribute to a larger narrative of living history.
?How can we begin to write our own history in this community??
Working as a group, RYP Internship students will plan, organize, and host their own community event in Roxbury. The event will feature artwork from the year, an interactive activity, and a ?main event? (panel discussion, film showing, live performance, etc.)
This aspect of the RYP Internship program allows students to choose topics they’re passionate about and to take ownership of their learning. It also develops collaboration and time-management skills and illustrates how stories can actually have an impact on students’ communities and effect change.
2. Organizing a Community Event
Working as a group, RYP students will plan, organize, and host their own community event in Roxbury. The event will feature artwork from the year, an interactive activity, and a ?main event? (panel discussion, film showing, live performance, etc.)
This aspect of the RYP program allows students to choose topics they’re passionate about and to take ownership of their learning. It also develops collaboration and time-management skills and illustrates how stories can actually have an impact on students’ communities and effect change.
For example, this year RYP Interns are planning an event in May with the theme, ?Everybody Eats?. This event is being planned with a focus on food justice, systems, and insecurity. The students have been researching and discussing this topic throughout the semester. This work will culminate with an event for the community that focuses on the topic, shares information about it in a variety of ways, and that provides resource information and a call to action for those in attendance.