2/10/05—Boston College Law School’s Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project is pleased to announce that its art and entrepreneurship program for girls in the juvenile justice system, H.U.M.A.N. (Hear us Make Artistic Noise), will open the exhibit “On the Stand” on Friday, February 18th from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The exhibit, a dramatic and powerful collection of work from a rarely heard perspective, reflects girls’ voices through collage, painting, photography and graphic design while educating the larger community about the issues they face. It will be on display at the Cloud Foundation, located on Boylston Street across from the Boston Public Library.

“The project has really been life changing for these girls,” said JRAP Director Francine Sherman. “It allows them to express themselves in ways they may not have experienced before, while also giving them the opportunity to do something positive with the art they produce.”

The Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project is a clinical program at Boston College Law School in which students apply their education in juvenile justice and child advocacy to problem areas of juvenile representation and policy. Students primarily represent girls in the Massachusetts justice system across the full-range of their legal needs. Issues include delinquency, post-disposition administrative advocacy, special education, personal injury, status offenses, child abuse and neglect, and public benefits. In addition, students work as guardians-ad-litem for girls in the status offender system with a focus on education law.

H.U.M.A.N. (Hear us Make Artistic Noise) is an art and entrepreneurship program of Boston College Law School’s Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project. H.U.M.A.N. works with girls (13-18) in the juvenile justice system to use the visual arts to document and communicate their life experience. Through the creation of a visual autobiography and the exhibition and marketing of their artwork the young women involved are empowered by – 1) following a complex project through to fruition; 2) having their voices heard through a visual medium; 3) participating in a collaborative project with other young women and teachers. Gender responsive programming builds young women’s self-esteem by offering them success in an enterprise of social value. By allowing the young women to create a finished work of art inspired by their experiences and then display and market their work, they will experience success, fostering self-esteem.

The exhibit will be on display through March 27, 2005. For more information on H.U.M.A.N., visit their website at http://www.human-design-online.com/.

The Cloud Foundation: http://www.cloudfoundation.org/