MILWAUKEE — The old Department of Natural Resources building on North Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the Bronzeville neighborhood will be the future home of the Bronzeville Center for the Arts.
This week a few kids from the city got the chance to imagine what the new center could look like.
"It should be big windows so you can see into the place and want to go in," said Alaynah Williams, one of the campers.
She designed it with a lot of open space and a main stage for big artists to come and perform.
The program has a twist though. Architecture is taught to the kids through the lens of hip-hop.
"Our mission is to increase the number of minorities in the profession," said Michael Ford.
Watch: Kids learn about hip-hop and architecture all in one summer camp experience.
Ford created The Hip Hop Architecture Camp.
Currently, less than 2% of architects in the United States are Black and less than 1% are Black women. He thinks programs like his camp could change those statistics.
But how does hip-hop come in?
On the fourth day of the camp, the campers all walked down to the future Bronzeville Center for the Arts site. It was the backdrop for their music video.
The campers created a song about their life and architecture experience. The hook had the lyrics "I'm Black, I'm brave, I'm not afraid to make a change."
"It means we got confidence, we’re strong, we can do this," said Ny'cerion Jackson, who rapped the third verse in the song.
Ford says framing architecture around hip-hop gives kids of color a familiar way to access the field. He thinks if architecture can be more diverse, it could change the world.
"It's not just how the world starts to look as we have more diverse designers, it's about what problems do we start to solve through architecture," Ford said.
It’s about time to watch on your time. Stream local news and weather 24/7 by searching for “TMJ4” on your device.
Available for download on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and more.
