The red carpet was rolled out at the Dekker Centre on Thursday afternoon.
The occasion was the premiere of the music videos produced by students involved in The BEATS Encounter, a program designed for at-risk youth in the Battlefords who could be in danger of dropping out of school and spiral into a life of addiction and crime.
BEATS stands for Building Expression and Awareness Through Theatre and Sound, and has been running this year at Manacowin, Battleford Central and Sakewew High Schools.
It is a partnership between Prairie North Health Region, Living Sky School Division and Sakewew High School.
The event Thursday was the culmination of 15 weeks of the program, which is in its third year. Through those weeks, participants take part in a variety of creative outlets that involve music, dance, writing, fashion, video and filmmaking and other artistic activities.
There were 16 students involved in the performance and production of the videos. Thursday afternoon, the “stars” of the videos entered the Dekker Centre from limousines parked outside. It had all the trappings of a Hollywood premiere event, with cameras flashing and fans and well wishers surrounding the red carpet.
Also at the event was Saskatoon hip-hop group Concrete Mentality. The troupe performed a number of break dances to a hip-hop beat.
The group were able to coax teacher Kelly Waters and Mayor Ian Hamilton onto the dance floor to try some of the moves.
The videos presented had a hip-hop theme and the program’s co-ordinator Alan Corbeil, a social worker with Prairie North Health Region, explained to reporters why it was chosen.
Hip-hop grew out of the streets of New York in the 1970s, he explained.
“It was kids finding a way to do something creative with their time, and they made a movement away from the gang violence, and decided to do that through break-dancing battles instead, and for fun.”
The mission of the BEATS Encounter program, Corbeil explained, is to keep the students engaged.
“What we’re doing here is trying to increase school attendance for kids that are very likely to drop out of school, and that’s why they’re at risk,” he said.
They’re also at risk of “drugs, alcohol, gang involvement, family violence and all those things. So by getting them into the school in an engaging way, and getting them into a fun activity that allows them to learn healthy emotional regulation and communication skills. We’re tackling a lot of issues all at once, so it’s been very successful.”
Schools sent a number of students deemed “at-risk” for dropping out to the weekly sessions that were held over the 15 weeks of the program.
Phase one consisted of weekly sessions at Manacowin School, and as well as art sessions that involved artist-in-residence Holly Hildebrandt on Thursdays at which they are exposed to more visual arts.
Phase two was the project stage, where the students were divided into teams and took on various roles either in front of or behind the cameras to produce the videos.
As part of the program, the students are linked with adult mentors in the community as supports, and they work with staff members on an equal footing.
The idea is “building those relationships with authority figures, which they’d lose over years of getting into trouble at school and starting to resent authority figures and pulling away from schools and places that remind them of that cycle. So we’re trying to break those cycles and I think that’s the key to healing in our community,” said Corbeil.
The program has been well received and there has been interest expressed in expanding it to include more schools in the future and perhaps add some smaller in-house programs as well at each school.
Corbeil said there is also some talk about possibly expanding it to run throughout the year, either during noon hours or after hours.
He sees the BEATS Encounter program as going a long way to address the public safety issues that have landed North Battleford in the news for all kinds of negative reasons.
“We have many great things here,” said Corbeil.
“We have the opportunity to show healing in a place where there are a lot of difficult relationships. What we’re hoping for here is a community-wide movement.”
Students involved in The BEATS Encounter program in 2016 celebrated the culmination of the program with a gala red carpet event at the Dekker Centre on Thursday.
Students were there to premiere the music videos they produced as part of the program.
As part of the festivities, a hip-hop troupe from Saskatoon called Concrete Mentality performed a number of break dancing routines.
They even invited Mayor Ian Hamilton and teacher Kelly Waters to come and try to learn some moves of their own.
Inside, the Dekker Centre theatre was packed for the showing of the music videos, as well as a video that looked back on the successful year of the BEATS program.
