After School Matters Arts & Tech Fair

April 21, 2016

Teens in the Traditional Puerto Rican Bomba program perform a song, dance and drum piece at the After School Matters Arts and Tech Fair on April 9 at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center in Hermosa.

The After School Matters Arts & Tech Fair featured 75 teens from five different programs showcasing their work on Saturday, April 9, 2016 at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center in Hermosa. Several organizations will be share their resources for teens in arts and technology, including Smart Chicago and the Connect Chicago program, Digital Youth Network and their digital media learning initiatives, and Chicago City of Learning and their digital badges.

The event featured several outstanding performances by teens in arts and technology programs. Teens in the Spoken Word Academy at Kelly Hall YMCA program (Humboldt Park) performed spoken word pieces, the teen engineers from Level UP Youth Maker Space program (Ford City Mall, Ashburn) displayed their robots and explained the importance of bees to attendees, the poets of the Chicago Kaleidoscopes programs (Marine Leadership Academy, Logan Square) read their poetry for the crowd, the Nature TEENS (Teenagers Exploring and Explaining Nature and Science) of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum program (Lincoln Park) explained the basics of environmental science and handed out seeds for planting, and the Traditional Puerto Rican Bomba program (Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center, Hermosa) finished with a dance and drumming number. Congrats to all of our hard-working teens on an incredible showcase!