We Have Several Dreams

It's been a long time since I posted. The holidays are always a hectic (and sometimes stressful) time for the staff at the Carole Robertson Center, but we pushed through and now that we're back to our regularly scheduled programming I am regaining my sense of excitement.

Today I walked around the Center with a couple of the girls in the youth program asking kids, teens, and staff, "What's your dream?" and brandishing a voice recorder. We'd done the same thing, with a different series of questions, a couple months ago when we were building the documentary theater piece that we will be performing in late February; we interviewed participants and staff about their experience at the Carole Robertson Center, their hopes for the future, and their knowledge of Carole Robertson, the Center's namesake. The theater piece, which I'm directing, will be performed by a group of seven really enthusiastic girls and one earnest boy from the Youth Program, and will be part of our flotilla of Black History Month projects.

Back to "What's your dream?" In a couple weeks we're hosting a fashion show/performing arts showcase called Rip the Runway, which is a chance for the youth program participants to strut their stuff. Rip the Runway audience members will eat dinner at tables with centerpieces devoted to the dreams of each interviewee. Most of the kids we talked to described what they wanted to be when they grew up, and many wanted to be doctors, nurses, or teachers. When asked why, they said they wanted to help people. A couple of the staff members interviewed talked about what they would be doing if they weren't doing this (music, art, and writing, mostly, and I am definitely guilty of falling into this category), while others took the question more generally and told us that their dream was for world peace.

Nice. After the craziness of the past few months, that's my dream now too.