The hip-hop project seeks to unite young people through something they all love–music!
FPOA members met with Natalie Lewis Schere, PATH Co-Founder and Executive Director, along with Seth Schere, Co-Founder and Education/Program Director, and other organizational members in February to learn about PATH and to discuss funding and support options for the Artist in Residence Program.
After the meeting, FPOA members were given a tour of the Lightbox facility to better understand the PATH organization and community outreach.
The rich history of PATH (Preserving Archiving & Teaching Hip Hop, Inc.) was displayed through the timelines and ongoing activities at the site. The non-profit organization teaches the history, philosophy and the main elements of Hip-Hop culture.
The mission of PATH is to nurture creativity, advance scholarship, strengthen leadership and support entrepreneurship across generations. With the goal to inspire, educate, and entertain through Hip Hop and challenge negative stereotypes and destructive behaviors often associated with Hip Hop culture. These align with the Florida Partners project goals of supporting the positive opportunities for young artists connecting through the positive social connection of the Hip Hop in music, dance, and art. For more information check this simple opener: https://youtu.be/xjGwXKjJZXk
In August, the Florida Partners returned to Miami for their quarterly meeting and connect with the the participating artists in the PATH Artists in Residence program. The meeting was hosted by the by Intelligent Design Company in the One Flagler Building in downtown Miami. Tierney Boulay, founder and CEO of Intelligent Design, and Marc Miller welcomed the group with an overview of their company, a custom design house which creates and installs home theater, electronic automation, lighting control, motorized window treatments, whole house audio, security systems, and other services.
Their specialty is creating unique, intelligent technology projects for residential, commercial/MDU, and marine properties world-wide.
After the meeting, PATH had sponsored tickets for the FPOA members and the artists to visit the HistoryMiami Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate located in downtown Miami. The museum provides a rich history of the area through their posted exhibitions, artistic endeavors, city tours, educational outreach, research, collections and publications. For more information see https://youtu.be/jB6sk838Buo
After the board meeting, the artists joined the group to share their personal journey as an artists in their country. The artists were invited to share their experiences from the PATH residency program. The selected artists will develop and facilitate a project developed in partnership with PATH and Partners of the Americas that will be executed upon return to their home country (August 2019 – June 2020.)
A collaboration with Florida Partners of the Americas
July-August 2019
Claud-Michael Jik-Ruben Pringle (from Jamaica) EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: 2008- 2013, University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), Bachelors in Land Surveying and Geographic Information Studies (Honours)
ARTISTIC EXPERIENCE
• Nine years’ experience photographing a variety of events such as corporate, sports and weddings while also doing photo shoots such as commercial, fashion, editorial, product and fine art photography.
• Five years experience as a videographer/film maker.
How do you plan to share this experience with your own Partners chapter and your community?
I plan to make periodic posts on both Instagram and Twitter, starting in October 2019. I would also love to return to the chapter and carry out a showcase (Prints and Documentary) with the members. Back home I looking to have launch showcasing the documentary, printed photos and listening of the EP album, I’m aiming to carry this out in January 2020 in Kingston, Jamaica.
Jonathan Marcell Cano Zapata (Medellin Colombia)
Photographer and Videographer
2011-2014 Degree in foreign languages 7° Semesters
Medellín, Colombia Universidad de Antioquia
2010 High School
Medellín, Colombia Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia
Experience
• Worked with houses of culture offering workshops about basic and intermediate photography with young people from different neighborhoods of the city
• local musical media such as: SHOCK, Two Inky, Cocorota Inc, etc. at music festivals such as a photographer such as Altavoz, Rock al parquet and many other
independent music festivals in the city
• worked with Sekajipo in Medellin; photography work at the process of the houses of culture in the different neighborhoods of Medellin
How do you plan to share this experience with your own Partners chapter and your community?
I would like to start by gathering the community around a specific subject i.e. homelessness. Then, in October, the cultural center in my neighborhood will showcase the work from the exchange and Columbia that looks at the same matter. I hope to provoke the community to think about the parallels of the two cultures separated by land and sea but united by the people and their problems.
Makenson Felix
Bois Verna, Port-au-Prince · Haiti
EXHBITIONS
The Joelle Donatien Balet Dance School
• Titanic
• Frog Prince
• Sister Act: January 2018
• Our Lady of Paris: January 2019
• The Bewitched Castle: June 2018
Arom Haiti
• Guedevi: October 2015
• Rose: March 2018
• A land, A people, A story: July 2016
How do you plan to share this experience with your own Partners chapter and your community?
Within my community, I fully plan on giving classes or workshops of my own where I can share with my friends and anyone else who would be interested in what I have learned abroad. There is a wide enough land by my home that I can hold dance classes. I plan to contact the owner and ask him if it would be possible to use it for this specific purpose. I could present a PowerPoint slide that showcases my experience and in general just present something that is unusual in my community in order to bring them up to date to things related to dance and how other places celebrate or use dancing as a medium to tell a story.
Vincent A. Pryce Belmont, St. John’s Parish, Antigua and Barbuda Education Antigua Grammar School 1996 (5 CXC Subjects) School Leaving; CXC Certificates Work Experience Paradice Catering, Private Chef
Provision of Chef Services: Cocktails, Intimate Dinners, Private Functions/Catering Antigua Overseas Bank (ABI Financial Group) Teller; Customer Service Representative
How do you plan to share this experience with your own Partners chapter and your community?
Spending time in the Wynwood community observing the many great works of art being incorporated in the architecture in the area gave me inspiration to develop a visual art concept entitled “Mural, Mural On The Wall.” I plan to get the primary and secondary schools in Antigua and Barbuda in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture and The Board of Education to engage students in planning, designing and painting murals in their respective constituencies. The project will be inspired by various themes and the goal is to beautify local surroundings and raise awareness about the importance of teamwork and solidarity as a means of community-building. Starting with my own community, The point & Villa constituency, I will begin by working with The Villa Primary School and Princess Margaret Secondary School as a pilot. Using these schools as models, I plan to scale the project to other constituencies. The process will include a voting process via social networks for each zone project where the students can take their work to be voted on social media FB and Instagram platforms.
One of the primary objectives of the project is to gather information about the specific needs of each school, so as to seek sponsorship/ funding for prizes that meet the needs of the winning students and their respective schools. I aim to start the ground work on this project by fall 2019.
Sekajipo Genes visited five Culture Houses (public scenarios for development, learning, enjoyment, coexistence, and artistic and cultural management in Medellin) and two UVAs (Unidades de Vida Articulada–part of a city project where Medellin’s Mayor, the INDER, and EPM support the process to build and adapt public spaces to strengthen community life with equitable opportunities for recreation and cultural expression) to participate in weekly workshops that included music instrumentation, sound engineering, artist development, and business methodology. You can check out some of his music at
https://www.reverbnation.com/musician/sekajipoforthepeople
2018 Medellin Report by Dawyen Sekajipo “Forthepeople” (downloads as a pdf) June 1st, 2018