YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE OPENING OF THE YOUTH VISIONS REFLECTION PARK
THE YOUTH VISIONS REFLECTION PARK – A CALL TO ACTION IN FULL COLOR
OPENING ON JULY 11TH 2014 AT 1:00 P.M. IN WILSON PARK, NORTH TOLEDO
BY THE YOUTH, OF THE YOUTH, FOR THE YOUTH, WITH THE YOUTH
The Youth Visions Reflection Park is a youth-centered, youth-planned, youth-built, youth-maintained park within which the insights and shared visions of neighborhood youth are heralded to the public. This Park stands out as a permanent monument celebrating the creative leadership potential of our most precious natural resource—our remarkable youth.
Young people from Toledo’s 2014 YouthBuild cohort have invested time, talents, and energy in creating a space within which the visions of hundreds of their peers can be displayed. These youth have cut a symbolic walking path, built reflection benches and helped with the installation of the murals. Further additions and enhancements to the park are currently being planned. Ideas have already been generated for additional murals that will be painted on the park buildings. The park will serve as a safe gathering place for youth, an outdoor gallery, a site for reflection and dialogue, a recreational space, a canvas and a stage for showcasing the talents of neighborhood youth, an educational field-trip site and a historical land-mark.
Murals for the reflection park were produced over a period of several years in partnership with many local organizations including the Youth Opportunities Program, the Toledo Police Department, the Neighborhood Association of North Toledo, Adelante, and the Teen Outreach Program. The signature Creative Peaceful Resistance (CPR) © approach—described below, has been used to produce murals besides those that will be installed in the reflection park. Murals on the Cherry Street Mission building, in the Juvenile Detention Center Main lobby, in the Summit YMCA Youth Center, in the Kwanzaa Park (Nebraska), and on Summit and Lagrange Street buildings have all been produced using the CPR approach.
Conceptual Background: Since the Spring of 2006, listening and learning sessions were initiated with hundreds of youth in Toledo’s urban areas. The very first sessions were organized to help young people in North Toledo to process their thoughts and feelings following a Neo Nazi intrusion. In the wake of this incident, many youth felt violated and they expressed feelings of intense anger and even despair. Over the course of several weeks, the youth were introduced to creative peaceful resistance as a strategy for peacefully protesting injustices and sharing visions for hope and renewal with the public. Intrigued and excited by the idea of CPR, youth responded with great enthusiasm. This approach seeks to harness the creative energy of youth, and channel it away from destructive actions and towards self and community transformation.
During the process of trying to identify ways to practice and promote CPR, the production of murals was clearly the most popular option. The process of producing CPR murals has helped hundreds of youth to learn how to constructively share their sentiments, insights, and visions for change. Specially trained artists sketch out the insights of youth and work closely with the latter to create full-color murals reflecting the visions of participating youth. All CPR murals are youth-informed, youth-guided, and youth-approved.
CONTACTS
Project Leader: Dr. Lorna Gonsalves, Architect of the CPR Program, lornagonsalves@yahoo.com
Project Partners: Mr. John Page, Youth Specialist, YouthBuild, jmpage@wsos.org
Mr. Dennis Garvin, Commissioner, Parks, Recreation, and Forestry, Dennis.Garvin@toledo.oh.gov
Mr. Charlie Johnson, Program Manager, Community Integration and Training for Employment, cjohnson@co.lucas.oh.us
This event is free and open to the public
