On Africa Visual Media - itself a really interesting blog on African and Africa-related cultural artifacts in film, photography, television, and print- I came across a post about a visit that photographer/street artist JR made to the banlieues or ghettos that ring Paris after the 2005 riots. The upclose portraits (blown up to poster-sizes) of the young men and women whom he photographed were then pasted across Paris, an open-air (and illegal) exhibition entitled ‘28mm - portrait of a generation‘ that - in Kamau Mucoki’s words - brings the gallery to the street and forces Parisians to confront the images of these youths who are usually depicted as rioting, violent hoodlums.

Below is an excellent video of the shooting and pasting of the portraits he took in collaboration with Ladj Ly:

This is not the first time JR uses photographs as a social mobilisation and activism tool. He was also behind the Face2Face project, on which I blogged in the past. With a number of other artists - such as the Bolognese graffiti creator BLU, with whom he collaborated on the Outsides project in Wuppertal, and to whose genius I will dedicate another post soon - he wants to use public spaces as vehicles for his strong political messages. Thus, breaking the ostentatious separation between ‘art’ and ‘life’, he transforms his pictures into posters and makes open space photo galleries out of our streets.

Simply amazing.

Below, I am reproducing an extract from a really interesting post on Studio 501c - a blog devoted to exploring ways in which new ICTs can benefit social organisations - on organizations that have sponsored a youth or teen blogging project. Some examples are well known, other new to me and worth investigating. The full post can be accessed here.

“[…] Britt Bravo wrote of one organization that has a blog on which teens post but which, because of safety reasons, prefers not to be publicized widely. Britt also mentioned:

• the Young Caucasus Women’s Project, which she and Beth Kanter were a part of in the spring of 2006 and
• New Moon Magazine, which has a blog that girls can submit to.

Beth Kanter kindly posted my email query to her blog and suggested these resources:

• Shaping Youth
• Global Kids (web site and blog)
• TakingItGlobal
• MacArthur Spotlight Blog: Digital Youth Discuss Digital Media

In response to her post:

Michaela Hackner of World Learning wrote, “We’re in the process of developing strategies for this, starting with our study abroad blogging pilot this fall. We also host a Serbian youth program that we are planning to introduce to Vox.”

Lisa Canter said to “take a look at this dynamic NY youth organization” — www.girlsclub.org (Click on “A Day in the Life.”)

Nick Booth shared www.frankleytalk.com, which is “just getting started and is based in a neighbourhood in Birmingham (England).”

Marshall Kirkpatrick shared the resources below and suggested I look at “variations on this query” at http://snipurl.com/1qexf (danah boyd’s blog).

• www.youthnoise.com/
• www.netsquared.org/kahlon
• http://ypulse.com (Says Marshall, “There’s some coverage of the topic there. See http://snipurl.com/1qexe for an example.”)

[…]

nonprofits, nota bene: Michaela’s idea of using Vox for a youth project is a great one. This free platform allows bloggers to create members-only groups called “neighborhoods.” Users can log onto the neighborhood page to see recent posts from all other members. As the Vox site says, “You can choose the privacy level for every post, every picture, every sound clip, every video. Put up posts for the world. Put up posts for just your family. Or just your friends.“