The youth program that worked

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The youth program that worked
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BY REA MCNAMARA November 07, 2007 10:11
Ten years ago, the arts organization that occupied suite 607 at 96 Spadina Ave. quietly closed its doors. At
the time it was considered just another casualty of the Common Sense Revolution.
During its early-’90s heyday, the organization was a hub for young artists of colour. Suite 607 was where
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— as the organization’s motto said — fresh minds, fresh talents and fresh arts met.
In Toronto’s arts sector, the Fresh Arts organization has since become the blueprint for youth-led
community arts initiatives. Its true legacy, however, lies in the handful of participants who have gone on
to become some of our city’s most prominent artists. At least one commentator has said that Fresh Arts
built the Toronto hip-hop scene, which may be a slight overstatement, but, without question, it
significantly influenced the course of Toronto’s urban-music industry. A short list of its alumni includes
rapper Kardinal Offishall, singer Jully Black, dub poet d’bi.young.anitafrika, music video director Lil’X,
hip-hop producer Saukrates and Flow 93.5 radio hosts Mark Strong and J Wyze.
Playwright trey anthony began writing one of the monologues that became part of ’Da Kink In My Hair in
the program. She recalls the focus on black urban culture and, particularly, the mentorship of more
experienced artists as being transformative. “Being able to have things [understood] from a cultural
perspective and not see everything from a white, Eurocentric viewpoint as ‘real art’ gave me the courage
to do what I wanted to do and tell our own stories,” she says.
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The participants benefitted from professional arts training, access to resources and, most notably,
partnerships with established artists that mobilized a community into recognizing its own identity.
Why did this budding institution — a uniquely Torontonian take on Fame or Julliard — have to be another
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lack imaginative large-scale programs that both serve disadvantaged youth and enrich the city’s culture.
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Fifteen years ago, the situation was a lot worse. The province was mired in a deep recession and racial
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dream deferred? A decade later, for all the talk around City Hall about “priority neighbourhoods,” we still
and cultural tensions were becoming ever more visible. Ongoing conflicts with government social-service
agencies and the police climaxed in the Yonge Street Riots of May 1992.
“Certainly that was an event that woke everybody up in some sense,” recalls then-NDP premier Bob Rae,
whose government had already responded to the recession with increased support for social programs.
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“We faced a lot of opposition, because [such programs] cost money and people were saying how the
government should cut back. But we didn’t want to risk the youth programs, and we wanted to make sure
that we had activities for young people facing economic challenges and not finding an outlet for what
they do.”
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Recognizing the alienation of marginalized youth, the government responded with Jobs Ontario Youth
(JOY), which placed 8,500 young people — with an emphasis on black youth — in subsidized private and
public sector jobs.
Meanwhile, Juno Award–winning dub poet and long-time cultural activist Lillian Allen — who was advising
on cultural and racial equity policy to the culture ministry — was asked for arts-education suggestions.
With native artist and Trent University Aboriginal studies professor Marrie Mumford and A Different
Booklist co-owner and storyteller Itah Sadu, she devised two separate JOY summer programs: Fresh
Elements and Artworks.
The programs were targeted at Aboriginal and black youth respectively and built on the mentorship of
established artists. Not only did they provide youth with artistic training within the different streams, but
also encouraged their engagement with the histories of their own cultures.
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The initial summer programs were wildly successful. After a joint sold-out performance in September
1992 at Harbourfront’s Brigantine Room, the Toronto Arts Council (TAC) became involved. The two
programs merged as the Fresh Arts organization and became the flagship for the council’s implementation
of a cultural-equity policy. In addition to Fresh Arts, the “CultureForce” initiative incubated a number of
culturally diverse arts organizations — Desh Pardesh, Native Women in the Arts and Sister Vision Press, for
example — which were at the time considered first steps to enable various communities to have a voice in
the development of their own organizations.
As Allen, administrator Sharon Fernandez and then-TAC executive director Rita Davies focused on
overseeing the broader CultureForce initiative, the running of the Fresh Arts organization was placed
under the leadership of two young women: Starr Jacobs and Verle Thompson.
Fresh Arts quickly expanded beyond the summer employment program to include year-round development
workshops as well as popular “rap sessions,” monthly discussion forums for youth-related issues.
It was through the rap sessions that Jacobs first established the organization’s “for youth by youth” tenet.
She hired spoken-word artist Motion to host an event that became a hugely popular early platform for
many hip-hop artists. They even did special “lockdown” rap sessions, visiting youth inmates at correctional
facilities.
“I think one of the first ones I did, J Wyze from Flow was the featured poet,” remembers Motion, who
lists Lil’X as another performer, as well as an MC by the name of Kool Aid, now known as Kardinal
Offishall. “Usually we did things on what was going on in the community — being black youth, police
mistreatment and the need for empowerment.… We’d choose films like Wild Style and talk about the
impact of hip-hop.”
J Wyze laughs as he recalls a particularly memorable session when rap artist Common stopped by to
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discuss building a career in hip-hop. “I remember sitting there in the group talking, and I look over at this
dude staring right at my mouth — ‘Yo, this guy is really taking what I have to say seriously!’”
Within the music program, the shift toward hip-hop culture coincided with the organization’s increasing
focus on the issues that black youth faced. Some say the shift in emphasis away from Aboriginal youth
stemmed from the lack of direct Aboriginal leadership in the organization, while some participants
interviewed say that the youth from the two cultures shared less in common than organizers might have
anticipated.
But the emphasis on black culture provided much-needed focus for many first- or second-generation
Canadians who were still wrestling with a hybridized identity.
“When you talk about mentorship, the uniqueness was that you had different age groups and different
levels of artists that were represented,” says Motion, who eventually handled the organization’s music
program.
Those mentored by Motion agree. “It’s an interesting thing, having respect for a leader like Motion, even
though now we’re adults and we realize we’re closer in age,” remembers 1994 music program participant
Jully Black. “But it came down to respect. Respecting her, her word, her vision. She would challenge and
position us.”
Sean Sax, a long-time Toronto DJ, was a 1993 Fresh Arts music participant alongside Kardinal Offishall,
Saukrates, Marvel, Zoe Johnson, Kid Kut and Don Skalachi. He recalls the impact of mentor Orin Isaacs,
who taught the music program during the early part of Fresh Arts and is currently musical director on
CTV’s Canadian Idol. Sax says it was after Isaacs played a demo by a young soul artist named Glenn Lewis
that he realized why he had assumed no relevant R&B was being made in Toronto.
“I assumed it was because we didn’t make any,” he says. “When I heard the music they were putting
together and I realized that it wasn’t that we weren’t making the music… I learned that we didn’t have
the proper infrastructure to promote black music. So it was inspirational to see him make good quality
music. That set me on the road to do my own music and my own production.”
Soon enough, the organization spun off youth collectives that emerged directly from the participants
themselves, ranging from a promotions company to a graphic arts business. In the summer of 1995,
Kardinal Offishall headed up the Maroon Squad, which included many of the original members of the Baby
Blue Sound Crew and even involved a trip to New York.
“They used to hit you with sticks,” music video director Lil’X jokes about the hard work involved. “It was
strict discipline. The trip to New York was where I met Hype [Williams] at Big Dog Films. So it was a very
direct and connected line from Fresh Arts to me right now.”
By 1995, it was becoming clear that the meteoric rise of Fresh Arts from a summer-jobs program to a
comprehensive organization never allowed Jacobs or Thompson to set up a proper organizational
infrastructure or find funding beyond government sources. Fresh Arts was a pioneer among youth-led arts
organizations, so there wasn’t any sort of manual available to support their goals. According to Davies,
the Toronto Arts Council was also unsure of how to support the program without compromising the youth
leadership of the organization.
Today, Thompson feels that support was sorely needed. “I remember one time someone said it’s almost
like we were so busy mentoring other people that no one was mentoring us.”
When the Harris government scrapped the JOY program in 1995, the end for Fresh Arts was in sight.
Programs got cut back as funding dried up. After three years in a constant cycle of maintaining programs,
applying for project funding and planning the next steps, both Jacobs and Thompson were suffering
burnout. Jacobs would leave the next year.
Many behind the program rue that the organization didn’t receive enough recognition from those outside
the black community. “Something as successful as Fresh Arts should’ve become an institution like the
the black community. “Something as successful as Fresh Arts should’ve become an institution like the
Toronto Symphony, National Ballet, the ROM or Theatre Passe Muraille,” says Allen. “All levels of
government should have institutionalized it.”
The lessons of Fresh Arts are somewhat evident in the support systems now available for youth-led
organizations, such as umbrella group ArtReach Toronto. But Nawa Nicole Simon of ArtReach (a Fresh Arts
alum) feels that we still have yet to see a youth non-profit as interdisciplinary as Fresh Arts.
“It seems like now people that were role models are all doing separate things,” she says. “That’s great,
but one of the strongest points of Fresh Arts was all of these established and rising artists doing something
together collectively.”
It’s odd that, for a program that offered so much, there’s very little information out there about its
history, and some participants, strangely, seem reluctant to speak of its impact. Both Saukrates and
Kardinal Offishall were unavailable to comment.
Jully Black believes that, as much as Fresh Arts provided the foundation for so many artists, it was the ties
formed among former participants — their sharing of resources, the struggles they still face in a Canadian
urban music industry that is still in its relative infancy — that have sustained them the most. “We’re still
friends 15 years later,” she says. “Give us some credit for picking up the phone and calling each other on
our birthdays, give us credit for inviting each other to shows not to get up on stage but to just be in the
crowd for support, for making up a handshake that we’re still doing as grown men and women that’s
preserving our childhood and our bond.”
DJ Sean Sax says perhaps if the program had gone on longer, the activist mentality of the previous
generation could have been better prepared to carry on the tradition. “I know if somebody told me that
the Fresh Arts program had started up again, I would be there,” he says.
Which is why Lillian Allen believes there’s still hope. “They can still get together. If they don’t have the
time, they designate people. That’s what people do with their communities,” she says. “It’s time for
those guys and gals to step up and put it in their plan. And that’s how it works in culture — and I think it
will happen.”
Email us at: [email protected] or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
1 Yonge Street, 2nd Floor, Toronto Ontario, M5E 1E6
User Comments
Comment Using Facebook Connect or Eye|D or Comment Anonymously
Newest first
Good Ol' Media
This is Kardinal writing in. Great article! The good thing about Fresh Arts is
that it was the platform to learn about how to take our careers to the next
not4sale
Mar 12, 2008 9:55 AM
level. This is what i was and STILL AM doing. To the writer, its unfortunate
that i didn't have time AT THE TIME to speak due to travelling around the
world, and u took that as being reluctant to speak about such a great
program. I was and still AM one of the biggest Fresh Arts supporters. Be
responsible to your community. There's no need to slight myself or
Saukrates. We learned at Fresh Arts to "Big Each Other Up"-not try and
bring them down. Despite the cheap shot, its still a great article and people
need to know about all the positive things that took place. Signing off from
Tokyo. Risspec.
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