ARCHIVE

Kite’s Nest’s Social Justice Leadership Academy (SJLA), is a FREE leadership program for teens (ages 13-19) based on the principles of social justice and youth-led change, centered around arts, healing, and personal and collective transformation. Enrollment is prioritized for BIPOC teens and Hudson School District students. Over the past year students in SJLA have explored the concept of home.

This summer the teens explored issues surrounding environmental justice and housing justice. We shifted our focus to the concept of nature as our first shelter—our original home and lifelong teacher. Over the course of five weeks students were invited to expand their understanding of “home” beyond physical structures to include the natural world that surrounds and sustains us all. As part of this inquiry students visited Wave Farm, exploring the art installations and partaking in hands-on workshops learning about field recording as a medium for artistic explorations. With the help of Kite’s Nest and Wave Farm staff, youth conducted their own creative field recordings of their experiences in nature; unearthing and harvesting different sounds that they then used to create these music tracks found here.