The Youth Programs team invites teens to join museum educators on the third Friday of every month to be inspired by the museum’s exhibitions and screenings, explore the museum, hang out, and get creative.

For our workshop on May 20, we will be presenting an activity inspired by documentary short film A Love Song for Latasha (2019) in our Shirley Temple Education Studio. The filmmaker, Sophia Nahli Allison will join us to introduce the film and do a Q & A.

We will be asking teens to respond to the film which focuses on the life of Latasha Harlins—a 15-year-old Black girl whose death became a flashpoint for the 1992 civil uprisings in Los Angeles—through poetry and to create a “memory map,” a visual representation utilizing their memories and images of a person or part of their community that is now gone. Teens will look at how the film uses dream-like imagery of Latasha’s community and her cousin and best friend’s recollections, to create a visual document of a young life cut short.

Sophia Nahli Allison is an experimental documentary filmmaker and photographer. Her documentary short A Love Song for Latasha was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Poet Hiram Sims will join us to guide teens in the creation of their poems. Sims is a poet, author, and Creative Writing Professor teaching at The Los Angeles Film School, USC, and the Creative Literature Initiative. Sims is also founder of Sims Library of Poetry, a community space dedicated to the study, performance, and composition of poetry located in South Los Angeles.

Meet us Friday, May 20 from 4:30pm to 6:30pm in the Shirley Temple Education Studio on Lower Level 1.

Workshops are for teens ages 14 and up. All workshops are free with museum admission and are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Museum admission is free for youth 17 and under with advance reservation.

Check back soon for upcoming workshop themes.

All workshops are free with museum admission and are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Museum admission is free for youth 17 and under with advance reservation.

If you have any questions or need assistance planning your visit, please email museumeducation@oscars.org