#thisis18
Youth Beat’s Sophia Hawkins interviewing VSCO CEO Joel Flory. Ruth Salazar is behind the camera.
Youth Beat’s female students stepped up BIG this month, playing a starring role in a VSCO event featuring New York Times gender editor, Jessica Bennett.
The event was hosted at the Oakland headquarters of VSCO -- a hugely popular photo-editing and sharing app. And it invited teens into a discussion centering on Bennett’s new book, “This is 18: Girls’ Lives Through Girls’ Eyes.”
Youth Beat’s own Sophia Hawkins, Serina Grinage, Sofia Verani, Sarah Lam and Ruth Salazar started off the Q&A portion of the night by standing in front of the audience and reciting what being 18 years old means to them. And they all reported that it felt great to feel seen and heard.
“It was nice to be able to narrate my point of view in front of a crowd of people,” explained Sofia. “As a young person, I feel like we don’t have as many opportunities to share our stories and have people actually listen. So it’s cool to be able to show that your story matters and people are listening.”
Likewise, Serina said, “It was really empowering to see so many women and especially women of color involved and care about the book, as well as to see how much Jessica cares about teenage girls and representing how smart we are.”
Youth Beat students were also invited to document the VSCO event. So we brought a full crew, and beginning and advanced students worked together to video-record the discussion, as well as conduct on-camera interviews with both Bennett and VSCO Co-Founder and CEO Joel Flory.
“I’ve been using VSCO since I was in middle school -- throughout my adolescence! So it was really phenomenal to get to interview VSCO’s CEO,” said Sophia. “The entire evening just really inspired me to continue going and not to limit myself when it comes to my creative bounds, to just be free . . . and happy.”
Stay tuned . . . our students are videotaping a video and photo workshop hosted by Vans as part of MetWest High School’s “We Are the People” conference this week!