National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence  

About The Event

The Collective Impact Series presents:
National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence  
Tuesday, February 15 at 6 p.m.

We warmly invite you to bring your curiosity and questions to this webinar featuring Dr. Janíce T. Samuels, executive director at the National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence, in conversation with Dr. Joshua A. Fisher, assistant professor of Immersive Media at Columbia College Chicago.

The presenters will introduce a new art activism and Augmented Reality (AR) technology collaboration that provides marginalized youth with the opportunity to be thought leaders in gun violence prevention. The National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence (NYAM) is the first non-profit project in the US to use a combination of art activism, commercial billboards, and AR technology for large-scale, youth-led campaigns for social good.

NYAM’s initial and ongoing out-of-school time intervention assists youth in developing and placing narrative artwork in communities to mobilize support for gun violence victims and for gun reform. To further support NYAM's goal to raise youth to the position of thought leaders on the issue of gun violence through creative media, NYAM began developing an in-school curriculum for youth personal leadership on gun violence prevention (GVP) to complement its out-of-school time intervention. With this shift to curriculum development, NYAM is expanding its call to action and launching a complementary initiative: The National Youth Art Movement for Educational Justice. 
 
To support NYAM's goal of implementing an arts-based practice for youth empowerment, Columbia's Interactive Arts and Media Department has begun training undergraduates in AR design and development. Undergraduates are taught how to use AR as part of a spatial justice practice that they can teach to younger students in and around Chicago. As part of this effort, students in Fisher's Immersive Environments course utilized pieces from the Museum of Contemporary Photography's collection to develop AR anti-violence advocacy prototypes. Through this practice-based pedagogy, students learn the skills they need to teach others.

Register for this public Zoom webinar here.

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Established by the School of Fine and Performing Arts in 2018, and supported by the Office of the Provost, this series encourages cross campus collaborations and sharing of knowledge leading to collective impact. Collective Impact strives to bring students, alumni, faculty, staff, and Chicago community members together with nationally renowned artists and community leaders to discuss the challenges and organization of community engagement and social justice in art making. 

Learn more about the Collective Impact Series here. Learn more about the National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence here.