2016 Seed Grant Awardees Abstracts

Sonny Kelly

Communication Studies

This project will partner with Fayetteville Urban Ministry’s Find-A-Friend (FAF) youth program to provide artistic enrichment and facilitate performance-based activism for social justice among youth in their Cumberland County, NC. Since 1982, FAF has offered dynamic out-if-school programming that motivates and enriches youth (ages 7 to 18) with workshops, activities, and a support system designed to prevent court involvement and to improve their academic success, self-esteem, and behavior.  Each year, FAF’s Summer Achievement Camp serves 50 to 70 youth with a variety of educational, recreational and culturally enriching experiences, free of charge.  All of the youth who participate in this camp have been referred to FAF because of past court involvement and/or other social challenges they have experienced.  Confronted with disproportionately high rates of school suspension, expulsion and court involvement, these youth are especially in danger of falling prey to the School to Prison Pipeline.  This project will connect the youth, their families, FAF staff, volunteers, and community stakeholders to a collaborative process of critical consciousness, arts-based activism, and community conversation about how the community may collectively consider the causes and effects of the School to Prison Pipeline, and collaboratively seek local solution.  This Participatory Action Research project will include an artistic enrichment program that will mobilize Photovoice along with other artistic forms of expression to prepare and empower youth to act as advocates and activists on behalf of themselves and their communities.  The final product of this project will include a community performance of poetry, dramatic interpretations, dance, song and photography.  Through interviews and observations, I will also measure the impact of this project on the youths’ sense of agency, eficacy and their tendency toward making positive and forward-thinking life choices

Molly Green

Department of Anthropology

My project seeks to incorporate the perspectives and priorities of small holder coffee and sugar cane producers in Cauca, Colombia that are increasingly being confronted by climate change related challenges. Working in collaboration with a local women’s group, we will use Photovoice as a means by which to identify and explore their local priorities, experiences, and adaptive choices as women producers working to address climate change. The photos will then be used to inform a method of sharing experiences at the community or departmental level and will inform my broader dissertation project as a means by which to incorporate local priorities in my research.