At LiLSPiKETV.com, we share your concern about violence and gang involvement in our communities in Indiana and across the United States.
The proposed LiLSPiKETV.com Juvenile delinquency prevention, treatment, and intervention strategic initiative is a localized, collaborative effort to curb youth delinquency involvement and gang-related crime throughout the United States of America, the State of Indiana, and Gary/Northwest Indiana.
Congress Findings
According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, allowing 1 youth to leave school for a life of crime and of drug abuse costs society $1,700,000 to $2,300,000 annually.
LiLSPiKETV, Media, Arts, + Culture (MAC) Department promotes personal healing, social justice, and community transformation by facilitating young people’s innovative creation of personal, political, and expressive media and art to shift the narrative about our youth.
Project Methods: LiLSPiKETV initiative is a collaborative community effort to decrease juvenile delinquency – and the crime that results – by implementing programs that include:
- After School Program
- Summer Camp Program
- Youth Production Events
- Family Stabilization Programs and Services
- Youth Mentoring
- Job and Career Training
- Job Placements
- Targeted Gang Prevention: Media, Arts, + Culture (MAC)
- National Crime Prevention Media Campaigns
LiLSPiKETV developed our Media, Arts, + Culture (MAC) juvenile delinquency prevention, treatment, and intervention programs in response to Gary, Indiana’s rising increase in gang-related crime over the past 20 years. In both a prevention and treatment approach, the program targets thirteen -to nineteen -year -old gang members and gang-prone youth who have been identified by the school districts, police department, and department of probation.
All youth in our target market of Gary, IN/Northwest Indiana are welcome to join LiLSPiKETV’s Media, Arts, + Culture (MAC); however, most participants come from the region’s poorest neighborhoods. LiLSPiKETV will actively recruit youth through guidance counselors at local high schools, yet most members join through word of mouth.
As a cornerstone of our MAC programming, we provide a number of programs and workshops:
- SPEAK Poet: An interactive spoken word workshop for all writing levels to develop our writing, performance, and editorial skills. Includes opportunities to perform, facilitate workshops, and publish work.
- SPiKE Land Production: An adapted version of The Wiz based in Gary, Indiana. SPiKE Land Production will bring together visual arts, music, spoken word, dance, and theater for a story of belonging, home, community power, and self-determination. In times of deeply felt disinvestment and displacement, this adaptation of the Wizard of Oz story will explore hope, liberation, and finding home within yourself and your community. Written by youth playwright, Rhoda Adams, this youth-led ensemble will premiere in a performance and teaching space that will provide hands-on production opportunities for youth.
- Lifeline: A music program for youth to learn new writing styles and techniques through hip hop history, fully immersing themselves in the trends of the past to form what hip hop is today. Youth leave with a better understanding of their identities and use writing as a form of self-care.
- Graphic Design: Members gain experience in graphic design, editing photographs, designing logos, and creating material for websites and social media.
- GARY RYSING Art Club: A weekly arts program where young people experience different art mediums, arts-based games, and explore their creativity. Open to all skill levels.
- Beat Production: Youth learn the basics of producing beats using Reason software.
- Videography 101: A video production workshop where youth learn the process of and gain skills in filmmaking. From videos as simple as recording a YouTube video to as complicated as making a short film, Videography 101 is a safe space for young artists who want to learn film production.
- Arts Now: Arts Integration Professional Development: RAPF staff partner with youth as creative leaders to co-facilitate trauma informed creative youth development workshops for educators, teaching artists, and administrators.
- Artist Development: Cultivates the mind, body, and soul of young artists by engaging in dialogue to dissect and challenge song content, enhance performance skills, and provide guidance on music production and recording. Young artists receive support in the creative process and music business.
- ProTools/Engineering: Members learn music production and recording.
- House Band: Members learn music theory and receive instruction and support in live instrumentation, including piano, drums, and guitar.
- Advanced Media Producers Internship Program: LiL SPiKE TV Advanced Media Producers (AMP) Internship Program, offers members training in technical and artistic production while receiving support in creative identity development, social consciousness-raising, and leadership development. Members can choose from five artistic areas of concentration that include, video, visual arts, music, performing arts, and event production. AMP interns are paid a stipend and develop as young artists, activists, and community leaders.
LiL SPiKE TV staff also coordinate paid opportunities in performance and exhibition as they arise at RAPF and in the community; provide mentorship in curriculum development and facilitation skills to teach peers, teachers, and present at conferences and workshops; and support involvement in the concert career pathways program through our relationship with the local Theatre. Youth have opportunities to perform music or spoken word at conferences through partnerships with community organizations and agencies in Lake County.
Following recruitment, teens will work with counselors and participate in 12-months of annual programs to address their specific needs. LiL SPiKE TV monitors youth for an additional three months, upon program completion.
Without true reform, the juvenile justice system will not be able to overcome the challenges it will face in the coming years when the number of juveniles is expected to increase by 18% between the years of 2021-2030.
The outcomes the Media, Arts, + Culture Department seeks are:
- Young people feel loved
- Young people construct their own narratives and those of their communities
- Young people have emotional, physical, and political safety to acquire tools, skills, and resources they need to understand and change inequities
- Systems takeover by next generation leaders committed to a platform for liberation in which cultural work and race are central
