Riot Youth receives grant for theater project

ANN ARBOR – Riot Youth, a program for LGBT teens run out of Ann Arbor's Neutral Zone, has received a grant from the Mukti Fund for its Gayrilla Theater Troupe.
The grant of $15,000 will fund the troupe's performances during the 2010-2011 school year. The objective of the performances is to relay the findings of a youth-led participatory research project to targeted audiences to help create a more positive school climate for queer students. The goal of the project is to extend the reach of the program to focus on audiences of high school students. Riot Youth teens will be addressing their own peer group.
The Neutral Zone was founded by teens in 1998 to provide a venue for needed social, cultural, educational, recreational and creative opportunities for area high schoolers. Its Riot Youth program builds leadership capacity for LGBTQ teenagers through retreats, workshops and ongoing training, hosts social events and opportunities, and works on several projects to create change.
Riot Youth designed and implemented a climate survey in area schools to address attitudes regarding sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. Approximately 1,200 students completed the survey across four high schools in Ann Arbor. To effectively share the findings with the broader community, Riot Youth developed Gayrilla Theater as a tool to share the research findings and to capture the attention of the audience to reflect on issues of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment.
Over the past year, the troupe has performed their dramatic presentation as a tool for social change through targeting school leaders, including principals, teachers and counselors. As a result of the project, the Ann Arbor school board has updated the discrimination policy to include gender identity and gender expression, school principals are reassessing reporting of harassment issues and counselors have already participated in district-wide LGBTQ training.
The Mukti Fund, a small private foundation based in Key West, Florida, awarded ten grants totaling $122,000 to queer youth theatres around the country. According to Weston Milliken, Mukti's vice-president, "Our goal has been to support existing and newer queer youth theaters around the country that work with youth to tell their stories about growing up queer in society."
Dr. Martin Dupuis, a Mukti Fund trustee, adds,
"The vision of the Mukti Fund is to use innovative theater programs as a vehicle for education and social change."