Augusta Savage Gallery presents an evening of films created by students from Holyoke entitled Off the Couch: Teens Challenge the Media on Wednesday, October 4 at 7pm.

These films are the result of an after-school media literacy and production program led by teachers Magdalena Gomez and James Lescault. Through this project, implemented in 1998, seven young women from Holyoke set out to decode, analyze and confront violence, consumerism, and stereotypical images promoted by popular culture and mass media. Heather Hume, Reina Lorenzi, Veronica Machuca, Lisette Martinez, Brenda Pedraza, Monica Pinkney, and Elsa Reyes participated in the seven-month, biweekly program, where they addressed issues such as the connection between logos/consumerism and peer pressure, television viewing habits among teens and children in the USA, and learning how to interview and be interviewed. Their efforts culminated in the creation of four projects: Beyond Belief: Female Myths and Media (30 minutes), a work concerning Public Housing tenants’ thoughts about living in the Housing Projects in the film The View from Across the Street (30 minutes), a young woman's personal diary entitled Getting to the Other Side (15 minutes), and original poems by young women artists called Look at Me (10 minutes).

The Youth and Media Program was funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Drug Elimination Funds, through the Holyoke Housing Authority to the Holyoke Youth Alliance (HYA).