What is Real Stories Gallery ?
Real Stories Gallery Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, facilitates contemporary storytelling and collective witness through the ARTS for the purpose of raising awareness and evoking social change. Through artistic storytelling, Real Stories works to break the silence surrounding the trafficking & transmission of human rights violations in today's HIVAIDS pandemic.
Charitable Status & Donations: We would like to thank everyone who has shared with us their images and ideas, and for generously donating Kodak Playsport Cameras, Computers, iPads, Desks & Chairs, Art Frames and their professionalism and humanity. Each $2500 secures one child for one year in our collaborative Show Me Your Life program for acutely at risk BOYS. Real Stories Gallery Foundation is a registered 501c3 public charity in the USA. EIN: 80-0575894. All contributions are 100% tax deductible (as allowed by law). For further information please contact http://realstoriesgallery@gmail.com
Our initiatives include:
2) www.real-stories-gallery.org. Our international web-based ARTS & Storytelling initiative in partnership with Art For Humanity (human rights violations; international fine art & poetry) and Cinematheque Films (24/7 international safe house and intensive arts program for male adolescents with HIVAIDS). A compassionate Foreword has been written by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize, 1984).
Our collaborative sketchbook of witness, our stories, permit us to introduce ourselves to each other, to our neighbours, strangers even. Stories compel us to feel; awakening empathy and courage to explore new ideas. Our stories will survive when some distant generation turns to ask "what were they doing. what were they thinking. how could they allow this to happen."
2) THE SMASH STREET BOYS FESTIVAL. http://www.facebook.com/TheSmashStreetBoysFestival
EVENTS BEING PLANNED INCLUDE: SUNDAY JULY 1, 2012 (1-4pm). NEW YORK CITY: A Street Art Festival bringing awareness of the international sex trade in boys (Laight Street, NY 10013, bet Varick & Hudson). STORYTELLING & PERFORMANCES: THE TALKING STICK & friends. STREET ART PHOTOGRAPHIC CANVAS & TRISTAN'S MOON ART INSTALLATION: CINEMATHEQUE & friends// (6-9pm) Film & Video Art Screening: Tribeca Cinema (Varick & Canal).
3) Tristan's Moon. Our Safe house art gallery @ 36 Laight Street, Tribeca, New York 10013. Our current art installation has been created in collaboration with Cinematheque/ Show Me Your Life, and includes photography, video, poetry, fine art prints, photo-collages and tattoo art created by mentors and students expressing their inner lives and experiences in the context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child's optional protocol: Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography; a superhighway for the trafficking & transmission of HIVAIDS and related & ongoing human rights violations.
"What really pisses me off is that the vast majority of men who have sex with boys are married men with kids of their own. Why do people keep pretending it is not happening. 1 in 6 males by the age of 16 is sexually abused in the USA and Canada. How many more photographic collages, art videos & poetry do we have to make before people believe it is happening. In their neighborhoods. On their watch. Around the world."
Real Stories Gallery Foundation salutes Les Garcons de Cinematheque for their ingenuity and guts. And for their astounding leadership and compassionate body of video art, photography and poetry created in a moment when their peers have yet to reach SAFE safe-houses and are surviving tremendous cruelty within our communities' Kafkaesque judicial and healthcare systems.
http://showmeyourlife.tumblr.com
3) Show Me Your Life. Our collaborative online art program in partnership with Cinematheque. The kids participating in Show Me Your Life are peer mentored to create artistic storytelling. We have much to learn from these young males about their world and what they need: SAFE safe-houses & access to appropriate & consistence healthcare is top of their wish list. Today we are working with students from around the world. Some of their work can be viewed in our collaborative ART installation housed at Tristan's Moon.
I Believe You. Show Me Your Life also works with kids who are self-identified sexworkers. We have much to learn from these young males about the reality of their lives. We are listening to their stories and ideas. I Believe You students use pseudonyms to protect vulnerable identities and localities.
4) HOPE or NOT TO HOPE: A CURE FOR HIVAIDS. Poetry by Show Me Your Life students & peer mentors.
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Show Me Your Life students (Real Stories Gallery Foundation 501c3) are allowed access to fair use art materials and mixed media in the teaching of iconic manipulation in photographic, video and film production. Mentors and students have come together, whether they happen to be well or ill. We have much to learn from these young people, as they stroll into our lives with their stories told so ingeniously with compassion and guts. It is not easy for anyone to speak of crimes against humanity's young in a public forum. **Please note: No children were harmed by Cinematheque during the creation of their art and storytelling.
