Burning Barriers Building Bridges (B4) Youth Theatre has been committed to working collaboratively across differences and nationalities to bring about equity and social justice for the past decade. As we celebrate our ten year anniversary amidst growing health disparities and heightened media around police violence, we are proud to introduce the Global Youth Arts Collaborative: Healthy Lives Training Initiative!

Drawing on our experience as leaders engaging with the community during the Ebola crisis in Liberia, this ten-week community organizing, theatre and filmmaking initiative will provide young people worldwide with the performance, production and filmmaking skills needed to address important global health issues and more. Though our initial program goals focused on COVID-19, interest in addressing police violence, racial inequity and other community issues has led to an expanded scope for the campaign.

Our global youth artists, hailing from four different countries, started meeting online for a virtual Masterclass Series in June where guest Arts Mentors in the fields of theatre and film conduct three hour interactive online classes over Zoom in Playwriting, Character Development, Acting, Directing and Filmmaking. Please see the Arts Mentors Page for more information! This series, supplemented by classes with B4YT Arts Instructors based on our community engagement model, helped these young people create short campaign films to debut at the end of August on B4YT social media platforms.

Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsfuitqTIsHNd9eVz7JfPP_engDXgYSMI5