School's OUT 1995

School’s OUT: The Naming Project began as a curriculum design project for lesbian and gay youth in New York facilitated by Dance Theater Workshop with video maker and teacher Mary Ellen Strom and social service providers Barbara Bickart and Bridget Hughes of the Youth Enrichment Services (Y.E.S.) Program of the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York. The project was kicked off in June 1993 with an 11-day workshop at The Hanger, an artist-in-residence facility in New Hampshire generously provided by artist Dan Hurlin. That workshop and subsequent ones included video production and editing, creative writing and performance and were designed to help lesbian and gay youths identify their individual voices. The approach encouraged the young people to become thinking producers and capable technicians; to investigate new genres; and to explore what it means to mediate themselves (individually and as a group) as young lesbians and gay men.

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During 1993-94, workshop sessions and monthly exhibitions were scheduled for the New York young people to show their work at venues such as The Mix Festival, Art in General, Downtown Arts, The Kitchen, DCTV and other organizations in New York. Under the auspices of The Arts Company, the New York School's OUT project participants traveled to Houston; TX (June 1994) and Manchester, England (September 1994), where they worked with local lesbian and gay youth to create video and performance events that were presented at DiverseWorks Artspace and the “It’s Queer Up North” festival, respectively. The residency involved the New York youth as leaders of video production and editing sessions. 

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In January 1995, the New York group went on a four-day creative residency to The Walpack Valley Environmental Education Center located at the Delaware Water Gap. During this intensive period, the young people created new work and designed diversity trainings for future out-of-town residencies. Subsequent work-in-progress showings of the young people's new work occurred in New York at Dixon Place; The Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center; and the Queer Theater Conference and Performance Festival co-sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) and the Joseph Papp Public Theater. A new School's OUT show premiered at Dance Theater Workshop in New York in May 1995. 

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Boston was the third host site for a School's OUT residency, produced by The Arts Company with the assistance of Boston GLASS and The Theater Offensive. During the last week, six young people from the Boston area and five from New York were engaged full-time in a series of group-building activities and video, writing and performance workshops to produce new material for the Boston show. Director Mary Ellen Strom combined these locally produced video and performance segments with sections of the May 1995 New York show to create the Boston School's OUT program.  

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