On March 30th, local youth, artists/creatives, IWES Youth Fellows, wellness practitioners, and other community members joined us for a transformative afternoon where we celebrated youth resilience through the arts! The groundwork for this event began in November 2023 when IWES kicked off the Bounce Back Collective, an initiative from our Collective for Healthy Communities (CHC) department that is an answer to the call of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Children and Youth Resilience Challenge to create innovative, community-led solutions to advance the mental health of children and youth. The core members of the Collective were an intergenerational group of artists and creatives (youth and adult) interested in healing and building resilience. The main members of the Collective were a cohort of high school and college-aged youth who met once a month for four months to explore what resilience meant to them and to become more deeply immersed in the arts as a healing modality and start to make that connection for themselves. The sessions from November 2023 to February 2024 created space to test out different elements of the program, and it all led to the free, community-wide event we held in March that celebrated youth and New Orleans culture.

The Bounce Back Collective started its journey last November with “Behind Bulbancha: A Decolonized Walk,” which was led by Choctaw artist Lola Jean Darling. During this tour of the French Quarter, we sought to ground our project in history by learning more about the indigenous cultures that inhabited the land before it was called Louisiana (previously “Bulbancha”) and the native origins of the city. That grounding continued in December when the Collective visited New Orleans’ City Park to experience the beauty that the earth and nature can bring to one’s sense of being. During this outing, youth sat underneath a Chime Tree and listened to Black Indigenous storyteller, journalist, and artist Pearl DeGruy share folktales. Then, youth were introduced to the concept of mindfulness and led through a mindfulness exercise in the calm of nature. Following the exercise they took a meditative walk around the Big Lake to the Sculpture Garden, and IWES’ Media & Communications Director, Iman Shervington, gave a brief photography lesson before providing them with disposable cameras for them to document the world around them.

Fast forward to 2024, when the Collective kicked off the New Year in January with a Human-Centered Design session that Iman also led, so that the youth could create their own definition of resilience that reflected and validated their beliefs and experiences. Check out the definition below!

After establishing a baseline for the work by coming up with their own definition, in February IWES staff members and invited guests led the Collective in an afternoon of mini-sessions that were focused on the healing power of the arts. Through the lens of my experience as a professional bassist, I demonstrated how I use effects pedals to express various moods when playing. Anika Ullah, a medical student at UCLA and a collaborator on this project, showed us how she uses songwriting to explore complex emotions like grief and mental health, and she shared some of her favorite tips and techniques on finding her voice and style. IWES intern Brieze Levy, a founding dance instructor at Dancing Grounds, led a movement workshop encouraging collective members to use their bodies as a tool for emotional and mental release. Iman Shervington joined us again to expand upon on her mini-photography lesson from the December session, and spoke more in-depth about photography techniques and theory, showcasing the narrative capabilities of the art form. Lastly, CHC Program Manager and veteran educator, Angela Lockley, revisited her theatre roots with acting exercises complimented with personal anecdotes of how the artistic outlet she found in theatre as a young person changed her life.

Finally, it came time to host our community-wide event, an all day Bounce Back Red Tent held at the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice, located on one of New Orleans’ most historic streets, Bayou Road. Choosing Bayou Road as the location of the event was intentional; it was a nod to the Bulbancha Walk, where we were informed that indigenous peoples used that very road as a path for over 4,000 years. Today, Bayou Road is also renowned for being a hub for Black-owned businesses, and it spans into the Tremé, the oldest Black neighborhood in America. Over 200 young people and adults were introduced to the Collective and had the opportunity to attend a storytelling workshop, a communal drumming session, and a sound bath, or just take a fun photo at our photobooth. They also enjoyed free food and snowballs and were able to participate in interactive stations that offered origami flower making, beading, and the opportunity to write a “Love Letter to Self.” Trans Queer Youth NOLA, Girls Rock New Orleans, GrowDAT Youth Farm, the New Orleans Public Library, and KID smART also tabled at the event, offering resources and raising awareness of free youth programming available in the city. Additionally, partners from QT Care House, an LGBTQ+ collective committed to creating joyful, affirming, and accessible holistic care for Queer and Trans community, provided chair and table massages, reiki, sound healing, and tarot readings. The event closed out with performances from popular local rap group glbl wrmng, followed by the award winning Abramson Sci Academy Brass Band.

The Bounce Back Red Tent was the direct result of all of the exploration we experienced together as a Collective over the previous 4 months. When reflecting on her experience in those sessions, Laila Terry, an IWES Mental Health Peer Support Fellow and faithful (never missed a session!) member of the Bounce Back Collective, said, “I come to these Bounce Back workshops, and I’m allowed to kind of release and express myself, to reconnect with myself, rebuild that trust that I have, or that I want to have with myself and my community.” This event was a chance to bring together the healing modalities we tried out, and to scale them up and share them with the wider New Orleans youth community. Our intention was for youth to come away from the event with some new coping skills, resources, and other tools that could benefit their mental health and that they could tap back into at any time, given any circumstance…things they could bounce back to, if you may. Tyronae Smith, an IWES Policy Advisory Fellow and Collective member co-presented a storytelling workshop with CHC Manager, Meagan Dunham, where she reflected that,

“it is important that when you have a creative outlet that it builds you as a person, not just your creativity. It allows you to say, ‘Hey, I’m good at something!’ Even if you’re not the best at it, you’re able to do something that allows you to express yourself and it allows you to grow and see yourself in a positive light.” 

• tyronae smith

Bounce Back has demonstrated that the arts and cultural practices can help young people build and nurture their own forms of resilience. From sound baths to marching bands to taking a walk in nature, we want young people to define how they can bounce back from the challenges in their lives to places of amazing growth, but on their own terms, and we think we were able to achieve that so far over these past few months!

As mentioned at the beginning, this initiative is a part of the federal government’s first-ever Challenge focused on community solutions for youth mental health, so that means we are now waiting to see if we win the grand prize! Keep your fingers crossed as the judges review our final report, and check back in at the end of June to find out if we won!

If you have any questions about the Bounce Back initiative or IWES’ participation in the Children and Youth Resilience Challenge, please email Christina Illarmo.

Blog post written by Jemila Dunham, IWES CHC Program Associate.