Semaj, Elliott, Lilith, Elliot and Arie in the gorgeous cyberpunk photobooth Lilith created for our party, CYB3R_C0R3. Photos by Manny Vasquez
This summer, Fleisher hosted three interns, Semaj, Elliott, and Lilith, through our Teen Lounge program. From creating a zine about ColorWheels to planning a cyberpunk-themed party for teens and publicly addressing an act of vandalism at Teen Lounge, our interns had a busy summer and created lots of opportunities for youth to gather, celebrate, and advocate for the teen community at Fleisher.
This interview, facilitated by Semaj and including Elliott and Lilith as well as Teen Lounge participants Imani, Arie, and Elliot, culminates our teens’ summer internship experience and highlights successes and challenges from the summer, as well as the teens’ reflections on organizational responses to injustice, diversity at Fleisher, and creating better knowledge and access around our programs.
Semaj: To everyone here, how the heck was your summer?
Lilith: My summer was chaotic! I took almost all the summer art classes and was doing an internship, which was very chaotic but fun.
Semaj: I feel like you were probably there more than most of the staff!
Lilith: Probably! I unironically became a Fleisher staff person.
Semaj: Same with me too. I need a little name tag!
Lilith: Yeah Layla, where’s our name tags?!
Arie: My summer was pretty slow, mostly uneventful except for the events in Teen Lounge. I was trying to find a job but it didn’t really work out, so I decided to just work on my skills by drawing in my spare time. I’m preparing for CCP but other than that it was just a time to relax somewhat.
Artwork by Arie Melvin
Imani: My summer has been frankly boring! I have been doing nothing other than going to Teen Lounge events or going up to the Poconos for my sister’s birthday. Very recently, I got back into doing art and drawing again.
Semaj: I didn’t know you stopped!
Imani: Well, I wasn’t doing a lot of art for the majority of the summer, and then maybe 2 weeks ago I started getting back into it – my art block was gone and that’s when I finally actually finished a piece.
Artwork by Imani Santos
Elliott: My summer has been normal to chaotic chaos! The internship was chill, but a person who was commissioning my artwork then stopped responding turned out to still want their commission, so I’m making a crochet rigatoni, tortellini, tomato, and a frog.
You check out Elliott’s crochet artwork on Instagram!
Semaj: Big business is rough like that.
Elliot: My summer has been decent. It went very fast, it was more eventful than some past summers because I was doing a camp, but it just went fast.
Semaj: It’s like the older you get, the less it feels like summer, and the more it’s just like a normal month. Layla, do you want to answer too?
Layla: This summer I got to work with Semaj and Lilith and Elliott as Teen Lounge interns! It was a cool experience for me – there were a few instances where I came at it as the “adult” in the room telling you what you should do, and you all were like, “No, actually, here’s a better way to do it”. Teen Lounge is always about following the leadership of the teens, so being able to check myself in the internships and follow and support what you all wanted to do was a good experience for me. And made all of the projects so much better!
Semaj: I guess I can answer my own question too! Summer was pretty slow besides doing the internship. Life stuff happens, but slowly and surely I’m still moving forward.
I know we already had a discussion to reflect on the art that was defaced in Teen Lounge, and a lot of people here helped write our public response, so I’m curious, how do you feel about the response to our letter from the public?
Artwork by Darby Raynor
Elliot: I looked at the post but I did not read the comments.
Imani: Rule #1 of the internet, don’t read the comments!
Elliott: I think everyone under it was positive..
Lilith: When it first dropped on Instagram, I read a few comments and they were positive, I didn’t see any negative ones.
Semaj: For sure. Me and Layla and a few others talked about if we should post it on Instagram with open comments – should we have them on, off or limited? I was for just having them open. Layla was not too sure about it, but we did decide to leave the comments on and it was better than anyone expected, so I’m pretty happy about that.
Semaj: How do you guys feel like Fleisher (which encompasses Teen Lounge too) should react to situations of injustice down the line? Do you think the response to the defaced artwork was the right way, could it have been better?
Imani: I feel like it depends on what’s being defaced. When the Defund the Police poster was defaced, I don’t remember how Fleisher reacted, just the post that you curated. Does that count as Fleisher reacting if Teen Lounge wrote the post?
Semaj: I would respond by saying yes because when it came to the letter being published, a lot of Fleisher staff were supporting it being published alongside people in Teen Lounge.
Lilith: I remember editing the letter for the final draft, a lot of staff who read the letter were supporting us. Others weren’t as supportive, which is fine because people have their own opinions–
Semaj: That goes for any organization, really.
Layla: In this situation, I think there was also fear about posting the message – from the staff side, people agreed with the message but were worried about the liability or backlash to Fleisher.
Semaj: That leads into a whole different question. Earlier this summer, me, Layla, and Alex were talking about my internship project and ended up talking about diversity.
Artwork by Semaj Johnson. Semaj’s internship project, an Instagram series featuring Black creatives in Philly
Fleisher is pretty diverse in a lot of ways, like gender, politics, and race, but there is still a lopsidedness in some aspects. My internship was intended to give a platform to black youth, but it was pretty much impossible to find black youth at Fleisher to interview! I didn’t realize there was a lack of representation at Fleisher until I started doing the project. How do you guys feel about diversity at Fleisher?
Lilith: I’ve been at Fleisher for a while, and in terms of diversity, it’s gotten better in the past couple of years, but I definitely get what you are saying. In the summer classes, I was like “Wow! Either I’m the only Black person in the class, or there’s one other person. Okay!” It was a bit uncomfortable, but I’m also used to that.
Imani: I feel like there could be a little bit more diversity.
Elliott: I think the Philly art scene, in general, can be very not diverse.
Elliot: I guess I haven’t really noticed it to a large extent… It also might just be coming from the fact that I am white, it’s not something that I really notice.
Arie: I feel like it’s a start! We’re getting somewhere. We’re getting a lot more diverse teachers, and for students, I’m seeing a lot more Black students than I did before. So I’m really happy to see how we’re going to keep evolving, each step forward.
Semaj: Layla, you’re not dodging this question either!
Layla: I agree with what Elliott said about this issue in the art world in general! It takes real active effort to create a space that is welcoming and safe for people of color, especially in the art world. For white people, we’re all conditioned to see whiteness as the norm and the baseline. It takes intention to undo that. I think Black people are very underrepresented at Fleisher.
I think it’s really great that Teen Lounge has a lot of things that make the program accessible to people beyond our immediate neighborhood.
Semaj: It is interesting the way Teen Lounge is easily accessible. I signed up just by emailing Layla and saying I wanted to join and was immediately invited to join. It was that easy! But traveling down there, it’s quite far from where I live. I had never even heard of Fleisher until last summer.
Layla: I’m wondering if you all have any suggestions for how Fleisher can become more supportive of youth artists, and particularly BIPOC youth artists, going forward?
Elliott: I think tuition assistance isn’t explained well to people who need it.
Lilith: The other classes that Fleisher offers, like Saturday and adult classes, they explain it if you ask.
LE: That’s kind of on me, I usually don’t explain tuition assistance to Teen Lounge because you all can take classes for free. But also… True! That’s something everyone should know is available at Fleisher.
Semaj: I think one thing I would say to Fleisher staff is… be more aggressive! To me, the letter is the most memorable thing that’s happened this summer – we kind of had to walk on eggshells sometimes. If it was up to me, I would have straight said whatever I thought needed to be said. To Fleisher staff, I would say: be a lot more honest, be a lot more resistant to certain situations. It scares people, but it also sends a message of “Let us do our thing, listen to us!”
If you are trying to spread a message, and you can tell it’s getting misconstrued or redefined into something else, you have to be very resistant. At the end of the day, Fleisher is your workplace, you have friends here, you get new experiences here all the time – think of Fleisher as your home.
Photo by Semaj Johnson
Imani: I agree with that point of being more blunt. It makes me kind of upset when something happens at an organization and they just release a letter – like they’re not actually taking action to prevent this from not happening again. It feels like they want to have their cake and eat it too because they don’t want to alienate anyone. Just be blunt and move on, and the people who don’t support you – maybe we should alienate those people!
Semaj: Especially when there are a lot of youth at the organization, and in the arts – the arts, in general, is such a rebellious field! It’s the nature of art to try to express your true self, and no one wants to be silenced for that. How do you manage a business to run on top of that? There will always be a conflict.
Lilith: How can Fleisher do better at promoting to people of color? My mom is always advocating for Fleisher, being like “yeah, this is a cool art program, you should join” but a lot of POC don’t know about Fleisher or have heard about the programs that they have.
Imani: Fleisher seems to be working with the fact that they are established in South Philly. I live in North Philly and I knew nothing about Fleisher until my mom looked online and suggested it to me.
Semaj: It’s funny because I was literally going to bring that up. I live in Southwest, so everything is so far from me. Even events I would love to go to are an hour SEPTA ride up but would be 15 minutes driving. You can’t underestimate how far stuff is from you and how different a world that is for you.
Black artists that I follow on Instagram post about a lot of events. Fleisher hosts events too – I think Lilith said it, but pushing Fleisher out there to be like “Hey, this is a place you can host events at” directly helps too.
Elliot: I’m going to hop on to a point someone else made about reaching out. I hadn’t heard anything about Fleisher until the day that I joined, from when a friend asked if I wanted to go. I heard about it completely through word of mouth.
Semaj: Philly in general, the creative scene is so underground. In a sense it’s not Fleisher’s fault that Black people can’t find it, there are so many things that people can’t find which is so unfortunate.
If we want Fleisher to be a place where we host and show a lot more invitations to people of color, it stems from within as well as outside. If there’s not Black people there in the first place, how will they even care to reach out to the community?
Arie: Post on social media about events going on! Host a small little event where artists from Teen Lounge show their work – sort of like a mini-convention, I guess, to get people interested. Sort of like how we have the Proposal Fair, but more of a live event so people can see what the classes are like.
Semaj: That’s a really good idea! Have our own Teen Lounge convention.
Lilith: If Fleisher attends more community-based events to connect with the audience there, I think that would be a good start.
Layla: Are any moments from this summer that were particularly fun or successful or things you would like to see more of as we kick off the school year in person?
Elliot: I loved the events, I think that was my favorite part over the summer.
Imani: I liked the kayaking trip!
I was really scared to get into the boat. It was so funny because when we were walking around with the tour guides, I was like “This is fine…” Then the moment I realized I actually had to get into a kayak, I was like “Oh shit. I can’t run now!” But I got in the water and was completely fine.
Semaj: Even though it didn’t happen over the summer, the New York trip was still pretty memorable. I had never been to New York and it was really, really fun to wake up early, hang out with people, and be someplace I’d never been to. I really hope next year we can have a summer trip, maybe going to Washington or New York again…
But out of all the events we had this summer, the movie nights were pretty fun – my favorite movie we watched was definitely Turning Red. It’s been a long time since I actually went out to the movie theater, so watching a movie with people was pretty fun.
Arie: Getting to watch the Matrix with everyone was very fun. I loved hearing everyone’s reactions – how absolutely confused we were in some scenes of the Matrix, or how hard we were laughing when watching Turning Red. When they were trying to get Morpheus back and they started shooting up everything, we were all so confused… It was brilliant! Pure anarchy.
Elliot: For me, it’s both hanging out with people, and doing fun stuff, and also just an event that I can look forward to. Like, “This thing I’m doing right now sucks… BUT, next weekend I’m going to a super fun Teen Lounge thing!”
Semaj: I also did very much enjoy the munchies.
Imani: Yes, that was my favorite part – free food! I was like, “I’ve already seen Turning Red but there will be pizza.”
Layla: Well, I appreciate you all so much for coming to participate and talking about this summer! Especially talking about your experiences as people of color, it’s a vulnerable topic and I really appreciate you all being so open. And Semaj, thank you for the thoughtful questions to lead this conversation!