“Everybody thinks they know what the youth needs and everybody has a different answer on what youth needs, but the fact is there is no one answer for what they need, there are a bunch of things they need.” – Story Stitchers Youth Artistic Director Brian Lewis
On Jan. 23, the Story Stitchers held their podcast ‘Stitch Cast Studio’ at High Low located on 3301 Washington Ave. in St. Louis, Missouri.
Story Stitchers help minority youth in St. Louis be heard in many aspects of art, whether it is music, music production or creative writing.
In the podcast, the participants talked about how minority youth gets sucked into their environments and sometimes make the wrong choice that land them in places that they do not want to be in. So, finding an art for them to get into before they make the wrong decisions is what Story Stitchers is there for. Even if there is a youth who gets in trouble, when they return to society, Story Stitchers and other youth organizations give them something to look forward to.
Branden Lewis, the youth artistic coordinator, explained how networking helps save the minority youth from troubled situations.
“We go to a lot of events that the other organizations are at. I actually just came from one at the Delmar DivINe about two weeks ago and it just comes from shaking hands, learning different ways of how they operate in reaching out to the youth, as well as letting them know how we operate too,” Lewis said.
Lewis also mentioned that he’s happy that the topic they discussed exists.
“While our organization is a youth organization, and we work with youth, the battle has to be fought on a lot of different fronts. Everybody thinks they know what the youth needs and everybody has a different answer on what youth needs, but the fact is there is no one answer for what they need, there are a bunch of things they need.”
Lewis closed out by mentioning that when going to networking events you pass by people that work with youth that have been in the criminal justice system and at risk youth. By going it helps them bring the youth in to have productive choices other than their environments.
