‘Not Safe’ For Teens opens a haunted house of teenage political anxieties in former Philly church

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Halloween is now in the rearview mirror, but one more haunted house is opening this weekend.

A youth arts program called “Not Safe” For Teens has transformed the former church at the Calvary Center for Culture and Community in West Philadelphia into the immersive art experience “You Are Here,” a hive of switch-backing hallways and small rooms featuring over 100 works of art by 30 young artists set against dramatic lighting, sound design and unsettling live performers.

Enter, if you dare, into the mind of a teenager.

“We wanted to do a haunted house around Halloween,” said Rosie Smith, 17, a founding member of NSFT. “But as we got these submissions, we dug deeper into the idea of the haunted house as the teenage mind.”

A video monologue in the lobby of Calvary gives a face to the teenager, played by Demetrius Pratt, 16, who also performs in person in the first room, the Dream Room, sleepwalking in a bedroom.

“I am made of what I imagine,” reads a red scrawl on the wall over the bed. “Dreams are private myths,” reads text in a video projection.

But cracks in the dream are apparent. Pratt is joined by another performer wearing a feather boa and pig ears constantly preening into her phone camera. Another message on the wall reads, “We asked for dreams: this is all we got.”

“You Are Here” becomes increasingly dystopian further down the makeshift hallway. The Control Room features portraits of fragmentation and distress. A performer wearing clown makeup cowers in the corner shadowboxing at a video projection.

The main part of the former church opens up with the “Hellscape,” a media landscape of dire news stories, advertising and social media.

“There are so many things being shot at his brain,” said co-curator Pepper Jaffe, 16, about the fictional character at the center of “You Are Here.” “All these things are swirling around in his brain, and they’re swirling around in our brains.”

Teens responding to the war in Gaza

“Not Safe” For Teens — the quotations are meant to be “ironically controversial” — started two years ago in response to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. Many students and teachers in Philadelphia felt compelled to address the emotionally charged and politically fraught situation that was hitting home in the city as large-scale protests broke out.

The official policy of the School District of Philadelphia was to reign in any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any other hot-button political issue. A teacher in Northeast Philly, Keziah Ridgeway, was suspended for allowing pro-Palestinian messaging in class, a move which triggered an angry response from parents.

“I go to a very diverse school in the city, we have a lot of marginalized groups in my school,” Jaffe said. “We see [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids that are happening, and we have immigrant families in our communities, and we’re not always allowed to talk about that in school.”

A former teacher at Science Leadership Academy, Lorraine Ustaris, saw teenagers in her classes grappling with current events, with no outlet to express themselves. She started asking students if they would want to put together an art show independent of the school.

“I told every class of students that I taught: I’m starting this art initiative,” said Ustaris, who now works at WHYY as a grant writer. “I don’t know what it’s going to be. We’ll make it together.”

The result is an art project conceived, curated and executed by teenagers. The first iteration was an exhibition at the Imperfect Gallery in Germantown last year. The second, “You Are Here,” is a much larger and more ambitious multimedia experience.

Ustaris said “Not Safe” For Teens is entirely youth-driven.

“I’m really just there to help them streamline their ideas and ground them in the reality of what logistics we’re going to face,” she said. “One of those things is budget.”

“You Are Here” is supported by a $5,000 grant from the Velocity Fund, as well as assistance from Curio Theater and its CuriosiTeens youth theater program, and the Philadelphia Artist in Residence. Ustaris, who is not paid, said all the grant money went into the show production.

Letting youth take control

In 1989, well before any of the “You Are Here” artists were born, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a set of articles outlining fundamental rights of children for international law.

Among those rights is the freedom to express themselves “orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.”

The convention goes further to say the expressions of children should be taken seriously and “given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”

For decades, youth-driven programs, art or otherwise, have been seen as beneficial for the development of teenagers. Give young people agency to develop, organize and carry out a creative project and they will be more invested in it and learn more in the process.

But youth-driven projects can be difficult to achieve.

“Even adults who are utterly sympathetic to the principle of enabling children to express their views may often feel uncomfortable with the ways, means and implications of putting this into practice,” reads a 2001 paper by the children’s right advocate Gerison Lansdown. “Indeed, children themselves frequently experience similar feelings of unease.”

Having adults in charge may be most useful when a project requires someone with specific skills or knowledge, such as a coach or art teacher, according to a paper by child psychologists from the University of Indiana Urbana-Champaign, “Adult-Driven Youth Programs: An Oxymoron?” The authors suggest youth-driven programs can better develop leadership skills, advising that projects adopt one strategy or the other, depending on the nature of the activity.

Ustaris said “Not Safe” For Teens needed to be youth-driven in order to counter what she calls institutional “programming.”

“Programmed to learn to the test. Expect there’s a right or wrong answer to everything,” she explained. “Youth spend a lot of time in institutions from the time they’re 5 years old. In every educational space that I’ve ever been I’ve wanted to disrupt that programming, to reach them at a time when ideas are so alive in them and not quite shut down yet.”

Reinventing art curation

The collective behind “Not Safe” For Teens curated “You Are Here” with no previous knowledge of curation. Smith is not even sure what she did can be called “curating,” or choosing artwork for display, because NSFT displayed everything it received. She and her co-curators spend months grouping submissions based on how they made them think and feel.

“Curating maybe isn’t even the best word for it because nothing gets left out,” Smith said. “We’re more, like, organizing, figuring out what this means to us. I don’t know what the word is.”

“It’s more crafting a story,” Jaffe said. “Instead of picking and choosing pieces, we’re taking this big pile of art — a metaphorical pile or literal — and we’re turning it into this journey.”

“In school settings, we have a school art show. They don’t get that much art because, from what I see, people are afraid to submit things because they don’t think they’re good enough,” she said. “I really love that we have everybody’s art. We’re not judging whether or not it’s ‘good’ art. It’s just part of who we are.”

The exhibition “You Are Here” opens with performers Saturday, Nov. 22. Subsequent dates with and without performers are to be determined, as announced on NSFT’s Instagram account.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series that explores the impact of creativity on student learning and success. WHYY and this series are supported by the Marrazzo Family Foundation, a foundation focused on fostering creativity in Philadelphia youth, which is led by Ellie and Jeffrey Marrazzo. WHYY News produces independent, fact-based news content for audiences in Greater Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey.