Summer Programs
Gateway to Science
Gateway to Science is a six-week program where students use hip hop as a medium for science instruction. To run the program, MMAP partners with Brian Brown, an expert literacy professor at Stanford University and researcher of hip hop culture. Together with Stanford REU: Gateways to Science Careers (G2SC), MMAP youth produce science tracks and music videos to introduce basic science ideas to middle school students.
Know Our Hood
Know Our Hood is a coalition among some of East Palo Alto’s strongest youth organizations - the East Palo Alto Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula, Foundation for a College Education, the Mural Music & Arts Project, Rebooting History, and Youth United for Community Action. The goals of the coalition are to: (a) teach young people the various ways one can achieve systemic change in our community (arts, service, community organizing, higher education, media production) and their role in doing so; (b) instill a sense of community-driven values that empower young people to be agents of change in all aspects of their lives; (c) strengthen our organizations’ collective relationships; (d) build unity among the young people we serve; and (e) build capacity of individual organizations to tap into each other’s strengths and share that with others’ youth constituents. MMAP has five youth participants involved.
Open Studios Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula (BGCP)
Open Studios BGCP is a great partnering opportunity, where MMAP offers a structured program that provides a series of individual and small group projects that build on creative design and critical thinking skills. Curriculum will give students the chance to express these skills in a variety of artistic forms, ranging from graffiti, sculpture, and mixed media art installation. Open Studios BGCP will culminate in a youth-produced booklet of student art and design processes. Their art will be displayed in an exhibition at our TMP East Palo Alto unveiling on August 24th.
Open Studios MMAP
Open Studios MMAP reaches out to the surrounding community and engages the youth through various art projects, with the goal of creating environmentally sustainable art with recycled goods. Youth of all ages, from toddlers to high school students, and their parents come to enjoy Open Studios. Created art pieces will be either exhibited throughout the new MMAP facilities at the TMP East Palo Alto Unveiling or taken home to their families. This is the first step to opening MMAP’s headquarters as a place where the community can gather and create art.
Summer Bridge
MMAP will develop, instruct, and evaluate a week-long program targeting East Palo Alto Academy’ rising freshman. MMAP’s instructional team will be comprised of key leadership, Olatunde Sobomehin, Rachel McIntire, and Edward “Scape” Martinez, who are trained in creative expression and culturally competent curriculum development. MMAP’s Summer Bridge instruction will: (a) build community amongst programmatic youth; (b) acclimate incoming freshman to the school’s resources, faculty and staff, and the positive school culture; and (c) beautify the facility and support students to develop a sense of pride for their campus. Through small, group-work activities, art projects, and team building exercises, students will explore culture, identity, and creativity through artistic means. Their expression will culminate in the creation of apparel, performance art (e.g., spoken word poetry), a colorful acrylic mural, an inspiring graffiti mural, and an inclusive outreach-based unveiling celebration.