Young Artist Leadership Summer Program at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center

About the Program

Category: Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs is collaborating with the author of the Oscar award-winning movie Moonlight, Tarell Alvin McCraney on the Youth Artist Leadership Summer Program (YALS) at the African Heritage Cultural Art Center. Launched in 2016, this annual ten-week leadership development program, engages young women of color (ages 13-18) in advanced-level performing art courses led by top professional working artists every summer. The Youth Artist Leadership Summer Program seeks to expand arts learning, leadership training, civic engagement, and access for underserved youth in Miami’s Liberty City. The Youth Artist Leadership Summer Program works to address the broad under-representation of women of color in arts leadership positions. An alumni of the African Heritage Cultural Art Center, McCraney was born and raised in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, Florida. He graduated from the New World School of the Arts High School, with the Exemplary Artist Award and the Dean’s Award in Theater in 1999. He studied at Theater School at DePaul University in Chicago graduating with the Sarah Siddons Award and a BFA in Acting 2003; at the British American Drama Academy (BADA) Mid-Summer at Oxford, with master teachers from the Royal Shakespeare Company; and at the Yale School of Drama where he received the Cole Porter Award upon graduating. In 2013, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant."