Three HBCU graduates started a free two-week band camp that aimed to provide Minnesota students from fifth to 12th grade with an HBCU experience. The state has no HBCUs, according to the Star Tribune.
The camp leader Arthur Turner III (Shaw University), 25-year-old music teacher D’Shonte Carter and her husband, the drumline instructor, Deondré Carter (both graduates of Virginia State University), teamed up with staff at North Community High and LoveWorks Academy for Visual and Performing Arts to make the camp happen.
In the Northside United Summer Band camp, students practice their instruments, dance, and learn discipline. At the end of the camp, they get the opportunity to perform in front of their friends and families on North Community High School’s stage.
“We hope that we’re igniting the fire that will give them a tool to be able to take their lives from where they currently are to wherever they want to go,” Turner, the executive director of LoveWorks Academy, said.
One of the students, 16-year-old DJ Gipson of Maple Grove High School, admitted that he didn’t want to go and was forced to by his parent.
“My mom forced me to,” he said. He doesn’t regret it and thinks his mom made the right choice because “he would have just been outside…doing nothing.”
14-year-old Terriana Carter-Ricks, a dancer, who is starting school in the fall, said she appreciated the push from the instructors at the camp.
D’Shonte hopes the camp’s final performance will lead to them receiving financial support for arts programs for the years. She stated that the students would practice and learn “for two weeks, and then, in reality, they don’t continue to learn during the school year…And there’s obviously a thirst for that. They want to do this. So do families. So my hope is that we as a state, and as this city, continue to provide these opportunities to students.”
