The Good News: Youth On Record

Youth On Record is a group that works with at-risk youth and gives them hands-on training in a music studio, helping them to become successful musicians, producers, and engineers! Their classes count toward the kids graduating from high school. They reside in a Denver Housing Authority building, in a community where half the population lives below the poverty line. According to their website (first link), of their 1000 students, 90% of them qualify for Temporary Assistance For Needy Families; 79% are Latinx and 12% are black; and annually, they serve 180 students who live at Youth Residential Treatment Facilities (so like, inpatient mental health services and rehab).

They just received a digital music computer lab, courtesy of the A Big Gigantic Difference Foundation!

image from Denverite article, link below

From https://www.denverite.com/youth-record-gets-digital-music-computer-lab-thanks-big-gigantic-52128/: "The new studio will double Youth on Record’s programming capacity and the amount of recording artists it can host. It’s expected to be ready this fall.

'Essentially this increases our capacity for students to do not only their own assignments,' Director of Programs Brent Adams said, 'but their life’s work.'"

image from Denverite article

(Again from the Denverite article) "Up next for Youth on Record: a new podcast, My Youth on Record.

It’s being produced by Duffy and Brackett with the help of three students and will be hosted by DeVotchKa’s Shawn King and a student. The guests will be local and non-local musicians, and rather than asking them traditional interview questions, they’ll have them bring in music they wrote as teenagers to dissect, talk about and laugh about.

Lalli and Salken were the first guests, but episodes won’t be released until August."

If you would like to donate to Youth On Record, here is their wish list (and you can also donate funds, of course):
https://www.youthonrecord.org/support-us/wish-list

This program is AWESOME. Usually kids in school are given really outdated equipment, if that, that leaves them ill-prepared for what is actually used in the fields they are studying. And a program that lets kids use their creativity in a way that can also help them find work doing it is fantastic! I was an art student in a poor school, and pretty much it was: here, draw/sculpt/paint this subject. Aaaand, go. No real instruction in HOW to do anything. We just winged it. Our computers were the oldest possible computers and not capable of any art programs, even back then! My high school had the same computers my elementary school (in a nicer neighborhood) had ten years earlier. If we needed art supplies, we had to pay for them. I almost had my graduation on hold because I had an art supply debt with the school! We certainly had no "real world creative jobs" training or even discussion. This program is so important!!

That Red Fish your momma always warned you about

Referral links:

Get free Manna, crypto UBI: https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=6e4b50d35e

Join Simbi, the barter economy website: https://simbi.com/wren-paasch/welcome