"Resiliency In Rhythm:" A youth voice celebration

The 2nd annual Resiliency In Rhythm, a youth-focused showcase of heARTivism storytelling as a socially just, transformative teaching tool, will be included in this year’s 12th Annual Fertile Ground Festival, an online festival of new creative works. The 45-minute production - sponsored for the last two years by Portland's Regional Arts & Culture Council - will be presented by I Am M.O.R.E., a nationally award-winning youth-development program. Learn more at www.IAmMOREresilient.com
The performers and speakers include up-and-coming Hip Hop artist Bonwavi; 15-year-poet, artist and actress Laila Vickers; and three young activists who have become leaders and organizers of Black Lives Matter protests in the Portland area. In June 2020, Neveah Bray, now a University of Portland freshman, led a BLM protest that attracted more than 500
demonstrators walking, for the first time, down the middle of downtown Corvallis.
The transformational programming of I Am MORE is intended to help youth move past the emotional grip of their trauma and shift into the depth of their possibilities. They each have been empowered to look more critically at the experiences that have shaped them, so that they can begin to walk through the world, not as victims, but as heroes of their own re-imagined story.