2016 Youth Ethnodrama Films about Segregation

Grand Center Arts Academy and Cardinal Ritter College Prep middle and high school youth ethnodramas about segregation that drew on interviews with families and teachers. Youth engaged their peers in dialogue at their school and then traveled all over St. Louis and to Iowa to present their films and engage audiences such as local legislators, educators, and smart growth business leaders in needed discussions.

2017 Youth Play about City-Planning Processes with NGA Relocation to NSTL 

Middle and high school North St. Louis youth from Youth and Family Center play about city-planning processes around the relocation of NGA to their area. Youth attended city planning meetings with Project Connect, interviewed a range of national and non-profit leaders, studied and critiqued a range of city proposals, and presented their findings at Venture Café.

2017-2018 Youth Ethnodrama: Problems/Solutions to St. Louis Redlining 

April 25, 2018, Grand Center Arts Academy students in the 2017-2018 Community Allies Ethnodrama Program presented their ethnodramatic research at the Fair Housing Conference. Their ethnodramatic research was about the collective action needed to transform a range of inequalities in St. Louis that stem from
​past and present policies and practices in banking, business, and housing. Students included in their data collection, stories and information from the Dismantling the Divide report organized by For the Sake of All, a research group in partnership with housing leaders in St. Louis. 

Student films and power points drew on their ethnodramatic analyses of historical data and interviews with local non-profit, credit union, business and educational leaders. 

2018 SIUE TRIO Upward Bound Ethnodrama: Bullying and Youth Leadership

SIUE upward bound ethnodrama program about student leadership amidst entrenched societal cultures of bullying. Students interviewed one another and created and performed skits that captured the range of bullying practices they encounter as well as approaches they can implement to counter this bullying. 

2019 SIUE TRIO Upward Bound: Becoming Ethnodramatic Researchers 

SIUE upward bound ethnodrama program in which students studied playwriting and ethnodrama and learned how to apply that research to their own individual community based topic. Students engaged with a number of digital platforms to create research libraries and to organize and code their articles in preparation for creating plays and ethnodramas on their topics. 

2020 SIUE TRIO Upward Bound: Becoming Ethnodramatic Poets 

SIUE upward bound ethnodrama program in which students studied playwriting and ethnodrama and learned how to apply that research to their own individual community based topic. Students engaged with a number of digital platforms to create research libraries and to organize and code their articles in preparation for creating poems that captured their research.