Staff Blog Week 5 - Brenden McHenry

Staff Blog Week 5

By Brenden McHenry – Boch Center School Programs Manager, City Spotlights Workshop Development Teaching Artist

For four straight days this summer, our 39 City Spotlights teens split into three groups and visited 21 different spots around the city—Boys and Girls Clubs, summer camps, community centers, and places like Zumix, where our Teen Leaders met other young musicians and immediately started creating music together. At each stop, they delivered workshops they wrote themselves about immigration, why people actually have to leave their countries (often because of climate change), and how adults consistently overlook teen voices in these conversations.

Between workshops, the teens had another mission: a city-wide performance competition. They danced and sang in parks, squares, and street corners, turning every commute into a potential stage.

After seven years working with this program and leading the development of these workshops and this tour, I had never seen competition this close. Through brutal heat and sudden thunderstorms, they performed over 100 times per group. The winning team beat second place by just one performance: 107 to 106. Watching them build friendships while performing in the rain and teaching their communities about empathy—that's what makes this work worthwhile.