Apemag

  • #MyStartupStory
  • tech
  • maker
  • Startup Lessons
  • In the South
    • Tennessee
    • Alabama
    • Arkansas
    • Florida
    • Georgia
    • Kentucky
    • Louisiana
    • Mississippi
    • North Carolina
    • South Carolina
  • Startup Support
    • Accelerators
    • Coding Bootcamps
    • Colleges and Universities
    • Incubators
#MyStartupStory, Diversity and Inclusion, In the South, Louisiana

New Orleans Startup Provides Opportunity for Youth in Creative Economy

- Lena Anthony -

Alberta_Headshot_BackyardAlberta Wright grew up in Boston surrounded by the arts. Her dad was an artist, but without a way to make money creating art to support his family, he pursued carpentry. Her mother was also an artist, but supplemented her work with teaching as a way to make ends meet. In high school, Wright, by then a teen artist, participated in a program called Artists for Humanity, which empowers youth to explore the creative economy by paying them to show up, listen to their mentors and create art. “That experience changed how I look at the accessibility of art for young people,” she says. “In that space, kids from across the city, kids who would never talk in the hallways at school, were nerding out over color choice and all these artistic things. Their differences didn’t really matter.”

Fast-forward a few years and Wright found herself in New Orleans participating in Teach for America. In the public charter school where she worked, there was no formal arts program and yet she came across a lot of really creative young people. One, in particular, a student who had already been classified as one of the worst kids in school, showed up one day wearing a hand-stenciled hoodie featuring inappropriate graphics. “I knew my job was to say, ‘That’s not the uniform, you need to go home,’ but I cared if he made it, if he did the stencil, if he came up with the concept,” she recalls.  “All the answers were yes, and that showed more motivation and problem-solving and creative thinking than I had ever seen from him before.”

Calling inequality in education one of the greatest human rights violations in our country, Wright decided she wanted there to be a place like Artists for Humanity in New Orleans. “[That student] needed a mentor, he needed to get paid, and he needed someone to teach him what’s appropriate and what’s not,” she says.

Breann_CameronSoon, Young Creative Agency was born. She piloted the program in her classroom—the students were tasked with creating a flier for a local youth running organization—and then operated it as an after-school program. Since last summer, the program has run in partnership with Youth Empowerment Project, a local nonprofit that engages underserved young people through community-based education, mentoring and employment readiness programs.

“Unlike a lot of job training programs in the city, we are not focusing on HVAC, janitorial or hospitality, but a high-wage career path that is knowledge-based but that a lot of kids don’t even know exists,” she says. “We’re putting young people to work on real client jobs in order to teach them technical skills in design, videography, graphic design and photography, and the soft skills needed like collaboration, pitching and meeting deadlines to succeed.”

One cornerstone of the program is its inclusiveness. There is an array of racial, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic backgrounds represented in each cohort of 9-12 students, as well as among the staff and volunteer mentors.

“For me, it’s incredibly important that there is diversity in background in order to create that dynamism of growth,” Wright says. “It’s an important part of how we create community and how we talk about how big the world is and that plays into our creative process. One point I really want to make is that the people who design our world right now mostly look and think the same. We put a lot of emphasis around questioning norms and accepted truths. As with other things, older white males have made the rules for a long time; we need to create a space for that to change.”

Wright is sensitive to the fact that it’s not enough to just get a group of people from diverse backgrounds together. “As white people, diversity is this thing that we all feel we need to achieve, but there is a type of diversity that feels very tokenized to the people in the room who represent the minority,” she explains. “If that so-called diversity is so talked about and emphasized that it becomes the point, then that’s counteractive. It’s about creating a space where everyone feels safe and listened to and represented in such a way that they’re able to be themselves there, and the demographics of their identity isn’t the thing that has made their presence important, but rather just their ideas.”

Ashanti_sketch_and_finished_product_ACETheir ideas came to fruition in a recent design project for Ace Hotels, which hired Young Creative Agency to design a 12-month calendar, which would be displayed in guest rooms, depicting the real New Orleans. During the brainstorming session, a lot of tough imagery came up—violence, poverty and the like. “Our creative challenge was to depict that truth in a way that satisfied the client,” Wright says. “So we settled on, OK, those are the things that are happening, but where do we find the beauty in that?” The answer? In a pair of hairy legs wearing stiletto heels and in an owl, silently judging the activities taking place on Bourbon Street.

As Young Creative Agency closes in on its first year as a full-time program, Wright is already looking to the future. The startup’s participation in accelerators and incubators, as well as pitch competitions, like PitchNOLA: Community Solutions, which it won in January, help increase brand awareness that is leading to more paying work for its young designers. Additionally, Wright and her team are expanding services to include rebranding campaigns. “When we start heading into web design and motion graphic and media that companies have real need for, I see our ability to grow as enormous,” she says.

Apr 1, 2016Lena Anthony

Funding for Minority-Owned Startups a Challenge, Says Arkansas FounderQ+A With LeShane Greenhill, Entrepreneur in Residence for CODE2040
5 years ago #MyStartupStory, Diversity and Inclusion, In the South, LouisianaAlberta Wright, creative economy, entrepreneuriALL, New Orleans, Young Creative Agency433
retro
Lena Anthony

Lena is serving as managing editor of Startup Southerner. She has something like a decade of experience writing and editing for various business audiences, including startups.

Website Twitter

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Share It!
0
GooglePlus
0
Facebook
0
Twitter
0
Linkedin
Posts
Recent Comments
  • East Tennessee Startups Have Chance to Win $15,000 on 2017 Startup Day « Startup Southerner on #MyStartupStory: Start a Beer Fund With BrewFund
  • East Tennessee Startups Have Chance to Win $15,000 on 2017 Startup Day « Startup Southerner on Ed Pershing, CEO of PYA, Reflects on Entrepreneurial Journey
  • Salemtown Board Co.: Scaling a Social Enterprise « Startup Southerner on Entrepreneurial Thinking for Nonprofits
  • Salemtown Board Co.: Scaling a Social Enterprise « Startup Southerner on The EntrepreLingo Series: S Is for Scalability
  • Domonique Townsend on The Unbalanced Reality of Work-Life Balance for Working Mothers
Be up-to-date!
  You Might Also Like  
In the South, Louisiana

Tackling NOLA’s Community Issues Through Entrepreneurship

Three New Orleans social startups won seed money in latest PitchNOLA event.

In the South, Louisiana

NOEW 2016 Celebrates the Startup Hustle

All hail the startup hustle at NOEW 2016, which starts today in New Orleans.

Diversity and Inclusion, In the South

Startup Scene in the South Lacks Diversity: A Q+A With Eyona Mitchell

A candid conversation about diversity in the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Funding, In the South, Louisiana, Startup Support

NOLA’s Water Challenge Proves Disruption Isn’t Just for Apps

Year-long initiative focuses on solving Louisiana's water problems through entrepreneurship.

Diversity and Inclusion

Two Asian-American Female Founders Walk Into a Slack Channel

A frank conversation about being Asian-American in the South.

#MyStartupStory, Diversity and Inclusion, South Carolina

#MyStartupStory: Tiny Techz Provides STEM Exposure to Underserved in South Carolina

Startup focuses on connecting youth to ideas and careers in science, tech, engineering and math.

Diversity and Inclusion

#entrepreneuriALL: Crowdsourcing Experiences for an Inclusive Ecosystem

Today, we officially introduce #entrepreneuriALL—a celebration of the voices that are already woven into the fabric of our ecosystem but may not have always been told. While we have been committed to bringing a variety of stories and first-person accounts since our launch in February, we want to reaffirm our commitment to having an honest, […]

Diversity and Inclusion, Incubators, North Carolina, Startup Support

The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship: Diversifying Startups in Greensboro, NC

Diversity is a cornerstone of this startup support organization.

  • About
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
Most Viewed
FOUNDING SPONSOR
your-image-description
2016 FOUNDING SPONSOR
2023 © Startup Southerner