Life Pieces to Masterpieces
It all began when Mary Brown and her former husband Larry Quick caught a group of four or five boys breaking windows outside of the youth summer program where Mary worked. This same group of kids had "given chase" – pulling pranks so adults would run after them – for weeks outside of the building. Quick understood these boys; he had been one of them in his youth. He told Mary that what the boys really wanted was "in"—they wanted to be part of the program inside. Soon after the incident the boys began waiting for Larry each day; eventually, he began escorting them into the building. That was the start of Life Pieces to Masterpieces and its work with "boys on the edge."
Fourteen years later, this small after-school program has become a multifaceted youth development organization with over 200 young African American males between the ages of 3 and 21, most of whom come from public housing east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Over half of the "apprentices," as they are called, are not attending school; many have been victims of abuse or neglect; and the majority face challenges within their households and neighborhoods—domestic violence, substance abuse, illiteracy and unemployment. More than 90 percent have no positive male role model present in the home.
The apprentices attend the program five to six days each week for three to five hours each day where they participate in an arts-based curriculum that also includes athletics, leadership training, and meditation. The name Life Pieces comes from the unique collaborative art projects they create: apprentices paint a canvas, cut it into various shapes, and sew the pieces together as a means of processing real-life experiences.
The accomplishments are significant. Approximately 90 percent of the boys have shown improved behavior at home and in school and 75 percent have significantly increased their grades. Apprentices have created more than 1,000 pieces of art that have been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Although Life Pieces has received recognition and accolades, the high moments for Mary are more personal ones, like when she sees the boys walk across the stage, smiling broadly, with their high school diplomas, or when one of the quieter boys gets up and speaks his mind, very clearly and confidently.
"We help define for the boys something that so often is not defined," says Mary. "Kids hear 'just do it' or 'you have the power' but nobody's ever really defined what their power is. We tell them exactly what their power is. We say, 'Your power lies in your thoughts, your words, and your actions.' Over time they really begin to ask 'what am I listening to? What am I, what are my eyes taking in? How is that being translated in terms of how I'm acting? Is it making me a better person?"
The organization's emblem and badge is a Shield of Faith that represents the artistic and spiritual values embodied by the program. The shield 's eight colors represent different principles: red represents Spiritual Principles, which complements green, representing Meditation. Orange represents Loving, which complements blue, representing Giving. Yellow stands for Language, complementing violet, which represents the Arts. By mixing a few colors they arrive at brown, which represents Discipline, and by mixing all the colors, they get black, which signifies Leadership.