As DC Public Library's (DCPL) teen employment program coordinator, I often ask teens what it's like to work at our library. One of their biggest complaints? The fact that there are lots of homeless people here. "They stink," some teens have told me. "They talk to themselves. They're crazy." Frequently parents have echoed these sentiments and expressed concern for their children's safety.
It's true. Like many urban libraries, we attract our share of homeless patrons. And they often share the same space with teens. How could we better serve the needs of both groups? I wondered. How could we help teens feel more comfortable around homeless library users? As it happened, I was soon about to find out.
In early 2009, DCPL's Customers without Homes Committee hosted a workshop to offer sensitivity training to our staff so that we could better serve our homeless patrons. The session was sponsored by the National Coalition for the Homeless' Speakers Bureau, and featured people who spoke firsthand about their experiences of being homeless. Listening to these men and women, I soon realized that if our teens could learn more about who the homeless were as individuals, perhaps our kids would become more understanding and less antagonistic toward them. And maybe our teens would be inspired to become advocates for the homeless. With those aims in mind, I created a nine-month project to train our teen employees in portrait photography and interviewing techniques so they could photograph and collect the oral histories of some of DC's homeless residents.
Since our library had worked with the National Coalition for the Homeless' Speakers' Bureau, it was a natural partner for the project. I wrote a mini-grant and received $5,000 from the IMLS Library Services and Technology Act, which was mostly used to cover the cost of training, provide participating Speakers' Bureau members with small honorariums, print the photographs, and purchase necessary materials.
I'd hoped to recruit 10 teens that worked at our library year-round, but only five were interested in participating in the project. Although many teens have busy schedules, it was difficult to get many of them onboard because of the stigma associated with homelessness that we hoped to dispel. In fact, as soon as I mentioned the words "working with the homeless," many teens immediately rejected the notion of joining our team.
We launched the project in November 2009. Our teens received two days of intensive training in digital photography techniques from photographer Anderson Zaca, who taught them about apertures, f-stops, SLR cameras, Omni and Tota lights, and much more. Then oral historian and librarian Kelly Navies taught them how to ask questions, how to actively listen to and pick up on interviewees' cues, and how to log in their oral histories.
Constance, who used to be homeless, pals around with Raekala, her photographer, after a shoot
Once the training was complete, the National Coalition for the Homeless identified people for our teens to photograph and interview, and every second Tuesday evening of the month, our kids sprung into action. They did everything from greeting the subjects to setting up the lights and backdrops to making the interviewees feel comfortable in front of the camera. After each session, students wrote down their thoughts about what they'd experienced during the interviews, and those reflections were posted on a blog on our library's website.
On the alternate Tuesdays, kids listened to the interviews, identifying all the major "moments" in each and writing them down—essentially creating metadata that other listeners could easily access. They also combed through their photos, selecting the best of the bunch and editing them in Photoshop.
As our kids worked, they often talked about the homeless people they'd met. "Dang, I can't believe Constance went through all that. And she's still kickin'—and happy, too! That's some strength, right there!" remarked one teen. "That's crazy that David didn't even know he had schizophrenia. I wonder how many other people out there have something like that and don't know it," said another young member of our team. "Boy, Eric could talk! I'm already on my fourth page of logs with him!"
Over the course of the nine-month project, our kids conducted nine in-depth interviews, shot hundreds of photos, and created a powerful exhibit of portraits and stories that were displayed at our central library. The exhibit, "Your Story Has a Home Here," ran from June to July 2010, outside the library's Teen Space. It was a perfect location for the display, and the large, colorful prints attracted a lot of favorable attention. As we were setting up our display, struggling to get things just right, two ninth graders coyly approached us and offered the following criticism: "We like the way you had it before. That photo is just so, like, in your face. It should be in the middle. " Other kids soon began checking out the exhibit, asking "What's this for?" When our teen photographers explained the project, a typical reaction was, "They're homeless? They don't look homeless."
Dawnesha and Miranta listen, as Anika shares some of her reflections from the year’s project at the exhibit opening
Our opening reception attracted almost 100 visitors, including many teens that weren't involved in the project but had come to support their friends. As our teen team shared their reflections on the project, other kids looked at the photos, listened to snippets of the stories that played on a kiosk, and commented on the description of a particular homeless person's life that accompanied each portrait. A few of our teen employees who'd initially been turned off by the project even came around, saying, "Man, I wish I had done it. I didn't think it was going to be like this."
Audience members listen with rapt attention as one of the Speakers Bureau members talks about what it was like being interviewed for the project
But perhaps the biggest changes took place in the kids who'd interviewed our homeless patrons. In a post-program survey, one teen wrote, "I admit that I had negative thoughts concerning homeless people and did not realize that many people become homeless because of factors they cannot control." Another said, "Homelessness could affect or happen to anyone. Homelessness doesn't have a specific resume; it is not an acquired job."
When the exhibit came down, the photos and stories weren't simply chucked into a back room. They were housed in the library's local history archives for others to see and read. Since then, the collection has deeply moved some of our patrons, including a woman who had tears in her eyes after viewing the accounts and images, which, she said, were some of the most raw and honest stories she'd ever heard. Our library is now exploring the possibility of creating a traveling exhibit, since we've had interest from a number of local and national organizations. And a gallery of the best teen-selected photos is available online. Take a look at it, and you'll see why those of us who worked on the project were deeply moved by the experience.
This article originally appeared in School Library Journal's enewsletter SLJTeen. Subscribe here.
GREAT IDEA! This was a touching read. On one hand, it
showed the teens who changed their minds once they heard
the stories from the homeless. On the other hand, it
showed mature thinking and understanding that adults
could get teens to "tune into.
Posted by Julie Brady on September 7, 2011 03:30:05PM
What a brilliant idea. What compassion, dedication and inspiration on Rebecca Renard's part and her teen volunteers.
Posted by Amy Gerstin Coombs on September 10, 2011 03:40:36PM
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