A hip-hop audio documentary by the Detroit Summer Live Arts Media Project

Through the Live Arts Media Project, Detroit Summer is using art and media to voice creative, sustainable solutions to the problems we face in our schools, neighborhoods and the world.

We believe that young people should have a voice in the decisions that determine their lives. Our CD, "Rising Up From the Ashes: Chronicles of a Drop-Out", is a youth response to the drop-out crisis in Detroit schools. If every student who dropped out went back to school, DPS would have enough money to keep all the schools open. What would it take to stop people from dropping out? What would it take to bring them back?

We believe it would take a new vision for the purpose of education, new relationships between students and teachers, between students and students, and between students and the material they are learning. We would need curriculum that was fair and relevant and that prepared youth to solve the urgent problems in their lives and their communities.

To keep our schools open, we need money. But we need creativity, hope and youth participation if we want our schools to fulfill the human right to education.