Rock Island’s Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center is hosting “Youth Voices on Display,” a PhotoVoice exhibit featuring the work of students from the West End Revitalization High School Club at Thurgood Marshall Learning Center.
Visitors can view the exhibit during regular business hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. The exhibit is free and open to the public in the lobby of the MLK Center at 630 9th St.
“Youth Voices on Display” showcases photographs taken by West End youth who documented their neighborhood from their own perspectives. The images and accompanying captions reflect the students’ lived experiences, community pride, challenges and hopes for the future.
The project is part of the MLK Center’s West End Revitalization (WER) initiative, a community-led effort focused on improving neighborhood well-being through residents’ voices, youth engagement and collaborative solutions.
“This project centers youth as leaders and storytellers in their own community,” WER Coordinator Thurgood Brooks said in a news release. “By sharing their perspectives through photography and writing, students are helping others see the West End through their eyes.”
Participants learned ethical photography practices and developed captions for their images with support from professors and students at Augustana College and interns from the Western Illinois University Museum Studies program.
Organizations or community spaces interested in hosting the exhibit at their location should contact the MLK Center. For details about “Youth Voices on Display” or the WER initiative, contact the MLK Center at (309) 732-2999 or visit www.mlkcenter.org.
The project is supported, in part, by Quad City Arts through Arts Dollars, a regranting program supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Hubbell-Waterman Foundation and the Quad Cities Community Foundation’s Isabel Bloom Art Education Endowment.
