PRESS RELEASE

If These Walls Could Talk: Inside Youth Speak Out

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — June 1, 2008 — This spring, City Youth Now, The Beat Within and Youth Speaks launched a joint project to audiotape the writings of detained youth. These recordings will give voice to the poetry, prose, raps and rhythms created behind the bars of California juvenile halls so that our young men and women in detention might live out loud in a world that so often forgets them.

The ultimate goal of this audio project is to give a literal voice to the first-person stories of youth offenders—to sound out those personal narratives, so often defeated or snuffed out by aspects of the short lives they have lived so far. Hearing one’s stories come alive on tape can often draw out what glitters in a kid. Buried interests surface in a new communication format, especially when stories are about topics that resonate in a personal way: topics chosen in their writing workshops to wake them up to what matters, to what may be deeply felt or experienced from a life “inside” or out. Things they may need to be addressed before returning to their homes and communities.

In working with Youth Speaks, which is dedicated to shifting the perception of youth by bringing alienated voices from the margins to the core; this audio project is a production of three invaluable local non-profit organizations representing decades of services to urban youth.

From The Beat Within’s writing and conversation workshops with young men and women in detention, to the sensitive, interpretative readings of those works by the young poets and activists from Youth Speaks, these recordings become an oral history component to The Beat Within’s weekly publication of prose from the inside. City Youth Now will distribute CDs to the youth to hear in their detention units, and take home upon their release. These first-person stories from inside juvenile hall will soon be heard via the City Youth Now website.

About City Youth Now:
Founded in 1950, City Youth Now provides a wide range of services and support for youth in the juvenile court system-including youth in the foster care and/or delinquency systems to promote responsible growth, dignity, and self worth. www.cityyouthnow.org

About The Beat Within
The Beat Within is a writing and conversation program in juvenile halls and a weekly magazine that grows out of that program. The Beat was founded in 1996 when a social worker inside San Francisco's Youth Guidance Center realized that there was no vehicle for the anguished voices of the incarcerated youth he heard. He decided to provide that vehicle, and The Beat was born. www.thebeatwithin.org

About Youth Speaks
Youth Speaks empowers the next generation of leaders, self-defined artists, and visionary activists through written and oral literacies. We challenge youth to find, develop, publicly present, and apply their voices as creators of social. www.youthspeaks.org

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Press Contact:
Brittany Heinrich
Executive Director
City Youth Now
brittany@cityyouthnow.org

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