is an initiative in (3) three parts designed to use the arts to promote positive ethnic identity development and to reconnect descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade across the world to the specificity of their African ancestry.
PART (1) ONE --The Legacy Program: Residency
is an theatre arts education, youth development initiative in which middle school students synthesize the study of personal genealogy and genetics into a theatrical experience of self-discovery. At the close of their culminating performance, students receive the results of their ancestry test, thus learning the place of their African ancestral heritage for the first time. Read what the Principal DiLeo-Berner of the William Alexander Middle School has to say about the LP: Residency.
PART (2) TWO -- The Legacy Program: Journey
is the cultural exchange part of the LP which allows students and the teaching artists who facilitate the Residency to travel to Africa for a theatrical cultural exchange with youth and professional artists on the continent. The Journey has a launch date in the summer of 2013.
PART (3) THREE --The Legacy Program: Reflection
is the part of the LP where the professional artists who facilitated the LP: Residency, create a piece of theatre using their LP:Residency experience as inspiration. Click here for more information on Glenn Gordon's RE:DEFINITION.
"The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history...We are the keepers of this legacy." -- Barack Obama, Inaugural Speech, Jan. 20, 2009
