Visionary by Cedric Cade, Jessica Peters, Lacharia Reasnover,Jamar Roberts and Damien Underwood Jr.

Our platform is called Visionary. We are giving teens an outlet to express their storiesthrough photography. Visionary seeks to help teens whose stories go unheard. TheVisionary organization will work with teens giving them proper training on the cameraand as a photojournalist. As a rising artist in Chicago, my favorite form of art is photographybecause a picture truly can speak a thousand words. Also, diversity in one’s visionis important in society.

We are looking for a safe space for teens to create a gallery to express their visions. Weimagine our space to hold around 15–25 people and would like it located on the southside or the west side of Chicago, due to the highest concentration of Black students,which we represent. The goal of the platform is to eventually host our gallery presentingthe stories and photos of Chicago youth from our viewpoint. We imagine our space hasa very large room where each wall will be covered with a giant picture to represent theteen’s focal story. Each additional picture will be accompanied by a Visionary student’sexplanation of their motives for the picture. This event is welcomed to any youth interestedin potentially becoming a Visionary, and all our supporters.

The chosen medium is the best way to present our submission because it’s the ideal mannerto showcase what we can do as young artists and photographers who are telling theworld our stories. The representative image shows who we are as Visionary and what ourplatform is about. The reason why we have chosen a website in our submission is thatwe can see one another’s work online and every youth has a chance to be one click awayfrom the Visionary program. We included a photo of us to showcase the creators andteam that comprises Visionary.