ARTWORKS SHOWCASE FOR YOUNG ARTISTS

Rochester, N.Y. May 9, 2001 - What's on the minds of today's young urban teens? Don¹t let the national media be your only source! Find out what 14, 15 and 16-year-old Rochesterians are thinking about at the ArtWorks Showcase. Young artists from the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester's ArtWorks After School Job Program will perform for the community on Wednesday, May 23, 2001, 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. at the Stardust Ballroom of the Edgerton Recreation Center, 41 Backus Street, Rochester. The program is free and open to the public.

This is the final performance of the 2001 ArtWorks After School Job Program, which combines professional apprenticeships in the arts with job readiness training. Since February, sixteen young writers and actors have been crafting spoken word performances and dramatic scenes that show their take on their world and their dreams, and events around them. They worked four days a week after school for 12 weeks with professional artists to learn drama or poetry and writing skills.

Minimum Wage Theater Group, our Drama team, trained with Annette Aguilar Ramos and Almeta Whitis and will be performing. The Writing team trained with Robert Ricks and Karen vanMeenan will be performing From Out The Shadows from their anthology, Nine Minds Combined. Anthologies will be available for purchase at the performance.

Our apprentice artists are aged 14 -16 from the City of Rochester. The young people were recruited in collaboration with the city's youth workforce development program, Good Grades Pay. The professional artists and apprentices worked under the supervision of Writers & Books, a national literary center based in Rochester.

ArtWorks 2001 After School Job Initiative is administered by the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester, and funded the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the City of Rochester, Joan and Harold Feinbloom Supporting Foundation of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, Cornyn Foundation, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Rochester and the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak.