InsideOut Inside the White House

InsideOut is pleased to announce that we are a recipient of a 2009 Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

We are one of 18 programs from across the country recognized for “transforming the lives of young people.”

In the words of First Lady Michelle Obama, Honorary Chairman of the committee, “The Coming Up Taller Award is the Nation’s highest honor for after-school and out-of-school arts and humanities programs that serve young people. The President and I strongly believe that arts and humanities education is essential for nurturing creative thinkers who will be our Nation’s future leaders.”

Two of those “future leaders,” InsideOut alum Lena Cintron (who is now a student at the University of Michigan), and Myriha Burton (a senior at Cass Technical High School), flew down to Washington, DC, with InsideOut’s Founder and Executive Director, Dr. Terry Blackhawk, to receive this award from the First Lady herself.

Now that she is back home in Detroit and back at work to build on InsideOut’s latest achievement, Blackhawk writes, “It was an inspiring, beautiful experience to accept the Coming Up Taller Award at the White House yesterday. It was also inspiring to be in the presence of so many fine youth arts organizations from around the county who, like InsideOut, are working against incredible odds to use the power of the arts to change young people’s lives.”

“The Coming Up Taller programs that we honor,” Obama writes, “give our young people a chance to discover their voices and to develop their talents, an opportunity that should be available to every single child in this Nation.”

In her opening remarks at yesterday’s award ceremony, Obama said, “I think one of the professional writers who works with young people through the InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit, Michigan, put it best when he said something very simple: ‘If you ask a kid to dream, he’ll dream.’”

To this Blackhawk adds, “Receiving a Coming Up Taller Award brings our dreams for young people into the spotlight and ensures that we will keep on pursuing and building on those dreams for years to come.”

In the spirit of dreaming and dreaming big for years to come, I’m sure that both Michelle Obama and President Obama would appreciate this poem by Talandra Royal, a 5^th grader at Mark Twain School & Academy.

Dream Box

I take hold of countries fighting with my hand

And put them into this box.

When I lift up my hand

I am holding the sunset.

I take hold of glass in the alley with my hand

And throw it into this box.

When I raise my hand

I am holding a rainbow.

I take hold of boys stealing with my hand

And slap them into this box.

When I lift my hand

I am holding a golden castle.

I take hold of a cigarette with gloves

And put it into this box.

When I lift my gloved hand

I am holding a cloud.

I take hold of foul language with my hand

And I set it into this box.

When I raise my hand

I am holding a garden of roses.