Common Ground is an arts-infused community building initiative for young people of the Carroll Avenue/Quebec Terrace homes in Silver Spring. The focus is to build skills in performing, visual, and media arts in order to produce pieces for a Pop-Up event at the end of the program. Family, friends, and community leaders gathered to see the work these young people worked hard on for the last five weeks. I was lucky enough to be asked to be a ‘Media Teaching Artist’ for the third year of the program where I got to see some of them go from struggling to turn on a video camera, to becoming proficient documentary filmmakers.

One of the pieces showcased at the Pop-Up event was a short documentary called Immigration Stories. The filmmakers decided they wanted to address the relevant topic of immigration by interviewing their peers as well as adults in the community. Each one of them took on different roles as camera operators, sound technicians, and interviewers to produce the documentary, which ended up being a hit at the Pop-Up event. Two of our Media Artists, Elbi Lucas and Brian Gutierrez, were the documentary ambassadors for the event where they bravely introduced their film in front of a room full of adults. It was apparent that it was well received by the audience from the barrage of compliments and handshakes they received after the screening.

The second piece was a collaborative effort between Performing and Media Arts in the form a choral poem. As a group, the performing artists developed a poem expressing their hopes, dreams, and desires where it was recited both individually and as a group. We had the idea to shoot the piece in front of a green screen in order to pair it with relevant imagery. The Media Artists learned how to properly light and shoot a group of their peers in front of this green screen as well as learn the process of browsing and sorting relevant stock footage. The piece expressed their playful side at times and was received with many laughs from the audience at the Pop-Up event.

The Pop-Up event on July 29^th was a huge success for everyone. Our documentary ambassadors introduced their work with ease and the event coverage team captured the spirit of Common Ground and the Pop-Up event with footage and photographs. YMCA staff and the youth agree that the Pop-Up event seems to get better with each year that Common Ground happens, so I am really excited to see what 2015 brings!