As the A3C Action Summit deadline draws near, we're counting down the days until our The 3rd annual A3C Action Competition in partnership with Atlanta’s Center for Civic Innovation. We had the pleasure of meeting Mazi Mutafa, Creative and Executive Director of Words Beats and Life in Washington, DC. He started the fellowship program for youth in school who either dropped out or are somehow court-involved to prepare and place them as support staff in creative businesses with a focus in the arts, music, and hip-hop industries.
For Words Beats and Life, hip hop is not simply music, but a platform to master a variety artistic forms and cultural practices created to transform the lives of individual artists and their communities. Their vision is to engage hip hop as a community of cultural practitioners and affirm the value of the arts and the artists themselves. At the heart of what they do, they believe that for its practitioners and participants, Hip-Hop often acts as the path towards self discovery.
In the above interview, Executive Director Mazi says the 2016 A3C Action Pitch Competition has been a valuable experience for them, as it's allowed his organization to in essence have a free consultant. They have been able to provide clothing, publications, artwork, classes and events to youth of all ages and are happy to be able to offer an alternative arts based educational experience that equips youth, art managers and scholars to move from theory to practice.
To shop, donate or learn more about Words Beats & Life, you can visit Words Beats and Life at www.WBLinc.org.
Applications for the 2017 Annual A3C Action Pitch Competition are now open!
A3C Action is national competition to find, support, and invest in new, innovative ideas that use art, music and hip-hop culture as a vehicle to advance social justice and civic engagement. A3C Action Pitch Competition amplifies creative projects to increase the number of creatives at the problem-solving table.
5-7 finalists are brought to Atlanta and provided with intensive training and mentoring prior to pitching their ideas to a diverse panel of judges.
The final pitch is on Friday, Oct 6th at the Action Summit
A3C Action Pitch Competition is a partnership with the Center for Civic Innovations