The You Will Rise Project was created seven years ago to give kids who are bullied a place to express themselves using the visual and performing arts. It was founded in Ohio by Paul Richmond and his longtime art teacher Linda Regula, both of whom were tormented by bullies as youngsters.
Richmond moved to Monterey a year-and-a-half ago with his husband, and six months ago he and volunteers conducted a free Art Against Bullying workshop with a dozen local high school students at Open Ground Studios in Seaside.
Six of those high school students returned to help with workshops at Palenke Arts for 28 students from six local middle schools.
“The thing they all have in common is the shared experience of being bullied,” Richmond says. “It doesn’t matter if they’re coming from a wealthy school or low-income; kids will find reasons to differentiate and make life difficult for certain peers.”
The workshops culminate with a pop-up exhibition of the kids’ emotional, dark and cathartic artwork – drawings, paintings, sculptures, installation, writing, music, performance, fashion – this Sunday, May 6. Some of the students will perform, some will speak, some will let the artwork speak for them.
“It’s always amazing working with these kids,” Richmond says. “The students who choose to participate are the ones who’ve gotten the worst of the bullying and are terrified to be there. They’ve been conditioned to be afraid of new social conditions. With awesome volunteers, the transformation we see is incredible.”
(Read more of Richmond’s interview on the Weekly’s Arts and Culure blog.)