Youth Culture is a BIG deal & BIG Success

Students from Mural Arts’ Big Picture art education program hosted an art gallery, entitled LITTLE big THINGS youth culture: it’s kind of a big deal on June 9 at the former Strawbridge and Clothier department store building at 8th and Market Streets.

Generation Z, also known as the Internet Generation is used to describe the younger generation and their impact on the world as it is growing more technologically advanced everyday. Yolanda Wisher, director of Art Education for Mural Arts says youth culture is a big deal because it shows a continuous cycle of trends and how kids interact with technologies and art to create their own recycled perception of things. The Big Picture students created art, using things from their every day life, including texting/text messages, social networks, and popular youthful sayings. These works of art were then put on display – for one day only – inside the raw space at the former Strawbridge’s.

Miguel Alomar a Big Picture student said that he loved how the teachers never gave up on students. He enjoyed learning from the teachers and thought art was a productive way to spend time after school. “Instead of robbing a bank you can draw art and make money,” he said. Featuring free food catered by The Lunch Truck Project, the event included spoken word, hip hop, and break dancing performed by some of the artistic students.

“I hope they start to see themselves as part of a larger history with Mural Arts because it has a great reputation and legacy and these young people are the next part of that legacy,” says Wisher. “Kids are the little big things. They are little people but they are the biggest, so I hope they know they are the culture and the creators of the culture.”
– Mercedes Lee, intern

-Photos by Lexi Brown, intern

Sponsored by: City of Philadelphia Department of Human Services, National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Charitable Trusts, Sheila Fortune Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Graham Partners, ACE Group, Verizon Foundation