04/01/2026
Reflections from our experience Selma, AL.
April 1st, 2026. -- Virtually all of our 16 professional performing artists—dancers, poets, musicians and filmmakers -- have taught and mentored teenagers. It’s an important pillar of our mission and one we are delighted to ramp up in 2026. beheard.world company members spent much of March in Selma, AL mentoring teens at the Ellwood Christian Academy in dance and spoken word.
Our work in Selma is an extension of youth programming we began in 2014 in Metro Boston, Brooklyn and Baltimore. Our motivation goes to the core of what we’ve learned through many years of experience; that the arts are not a frill for young people today, they are a lifeline, especially for youth growing up in under‑resourced, inner‑city neighborhoods. Creative spaces become special sanctuaries where they can breathe, imagine, and be seen. In a world that often defines them by circumstance, the arts offer something radical: the chance to define themselves.
Onstage—or in a studio, a Restorative Justice circle, a rehearsal room—young people learn to translate their lived experiences into movement, rhythm, and story. That act of self‑expression is powerful. It teaches them that their voice carries weight, that their perspective matters, that their emotions are not liabilities but sources of truth.
When a young person steps into a role, writes a poem, or dances through a fear they’ve never spoken aloud, they begin to understand themselves as creators in life-changing ways their confidence grows. Not the shallow confidence of performance for applause, but the deeper kind that comes from discovering new capacities within yourself. The arts help young people rewrite their internal narratives—shifting from “I can’t” to “I can,” from “I’m alone” to “I belong,” from “this is who I’ve been told I am” to “this is who I choose to become.”The performing arts don’t just change lives. By being heard, they reveal them.
