Students of Color Conference: Love, Liberation and Living Authentically

This spring, Lake Washington School District’s annual Students of Color Conference at Cascadia College welcomed over 150 students and featured 16 workshops, live music, and a powerful keynote speech from Emmy-nominated spoken word poet, Christian Paige.

Scholars explored this year’s theme, “Love, Liberation and Living Authentically,” through workshops such as Self Love and Celebration Through Art, Expanding Our Circles: The Power of Indigenous Communities, Own Your Story/Sé dueño de tu historia, Not Too Young: Music, Lyrics and Youth-Led Movements, Utilizing Social Media for Advocacy and Impact, and many more.

Here is how some scholars described their experience:

• "Uplifting, interactive, informative"
• "Engaging, collaborative, authentic"
• "There were lots of celebrating and congratulations. I loved it. I liked the MCs and the DJ. I liked the speaker, and the food was awesome. All the booths were great."
• "I have two main highlights in the conference… the first was being able to see what was going on in the community and seeing the cool things and projects that are near us. The second was in my second workshop when everyone was just talking about music and having really nice conversations. I loved that everyone was open and that we bonded over something so broad."