Youth Reporter Nia Thompson writes about her experience at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School as students exhibit their final projects from an Architecture class for all of Long Beach to view at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) where the work focuses on "reduce, reuse, and recycle."

Filipino high school youth performed music, dance and theater to celebrate Filipino culture at the third annual Cultural Night of the Sama Sama Youth Program.

Merced's Mariposa Art Company (MACo) held its Beachwood Art Walls event at the Ashby Flea Market to highlight the street art springing up in the unincorporated Beachwood community.

Sherman Alexie is a renowned poet, filmmaker, and author whose work focuses on his experiences growing up on an Indian Reservation, where he struggled with his racial identify and the difficulties of entering adolescence.

After school at Admiral Kidd Park in Long Beach, 22-year-old Walter Brown blasts pop music for a group of excited kids. The students learn a new routine from Brown each time he plays a new song. Some follow his moves; some enjoy their own free styles.

Shyamala Moorty extends her arms in the air with closed fists, while using her voice to deliver explicit messages. This is a fight and a dance all in one — a song to bring awareness to important global issues.

Raices Cultura, a youth organization in the heart of the Eastern Coachella Valley, has a big presence at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this year with the installation of “Paraiso,” an original work of art displayed at the world famous festival.

Two African American youth offer competing perspectives on Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” a movie about a former slave who sets out to free his wife from bondage and exact revenge on a sadistic Mississippi slave owner.

Silvia Avila, 17, and a 3-year veteran of the youth group in South Kern County, said the mural is more than just a wall with pretty pictures: “I think that the mural is going to influence the community, to show them that we don’t have to have graffiti, that we can have something better and actually show positive messages through our art."