“I see barren hallways / Broken cameras / Uninvited guests / There’s no service here / As if a sea of people were cast away on an island to fend for themselves”
So begins the first verse of the latest example of sourced storytelling for the Off/Page Project. The project is a collaboration between The Center for Investigative Reporting and Youth Speaks, the leading nonprofit presenter of spoken word performance, education and youth development programs in the country.
In conjunction with CIR’s new investigation — produced in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle and KQED — about the failures of Richmond, CA’s public housing agency, Off/Page recruited three poets from a local nonprofit to work with CIR reporter Amy Julia Harris.
Watch Off/Page’s new video, This is Home, which weaves the narratives of the investigation with the poets’ experiences growing up in Richmond.
