Mission

Street-Level Youth Media educates Chicago's urban youth in media arts and emerging technologies for use in self-expression, communication, and social change. Street-Level's programs build critical thinking skills for young people who have been historically neglected by public policy makers and mass media. Using video and audio production, computer art and the Internet, Street-Level's youth address community issues, access advanced communication technology and gain inclusion in our information-based society.

History

Everything that Street-Level is today started from a simple idea. What if young people had video cameras to document the world as they saw it? What stories would they tell? What could they teach us? And how would the power of media arts technology affect them and their communities?

In the summer of 1993, two artists and a teacher collaborated with teens from a local West Town high school to make forty videos about everything from gangs, to their families, and to the gradual gentrification of their neighborhood. They threw a giant community block party and installed their videos on seventy monitors on the streets with the sponsorship of Sculpture Chicago. This first Street-Level Block Party drew national attention and inspired the artists to seize the opportunity to make a further impact.

After securing space at a neighborhood storefront across from where four gang lines converged, the group piloted a program called Neutral Ground, and using cameras to create a series of video letters, the artists opened a dialogue between rival gangs who had never spoken to one another. The success of the videos taught youth how to communicate, and in the process, to be powerful catalysts for community building.

Soon, Street-Level added computers, software programs, and the Internet to the storefront, expanding youth’s experience with new tools for interactive learning and storytelling. In 1995, Street-Level incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation serving Chicago citywide and became one of the first organizations in the country to offer new technology access to urban youth. Three years later, Street-Level Youth Media won the first Coming Up Taller Award from President Clinton's Committee on the Arts and Humanities for its innovative approaches to arts education.

Today, Street-Level remains committed to engaging the multiple creativities of young people and promoting self-expression and critical thinking through its in-school and after-school media arts programming. Street Level programs now include video production, audio recording, television production, animation, web design, and graphic arts. In addition to Neutral Ground, our program space in West Town, Street Level instructors now conduct classes and workshops throughout Chicago via partnerships with schools and other youth agencies.

Our staff members are both artists and mentors who lead Street-Level's young people through formal artistic training in the media arts and help them process what they see and hear in the world around them - whether it is on TV, the Internet, in their homes, the movies, or on the streets. Using these tools, young artists address personal and community issues such as violence, family matters, racism, gentrification, and history. They learn that art is a potent medium for expression, capable of initiating positive personal and community change.