We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Your Favorite Jawns a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Your Favorite Jawns thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Our Juneteenth Cookout had definitely been our most meaningful project. It is the project we usually work the hardest on, have the most engagement with, and bring the most joy to our community. The first “Da Cookout: A Juneteenth Celebration” was hosted in 2020, during the height of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor protests when much of the Black community felt a collective sense of rage and hopelessness. Other than the protests, opportunities for togetherness were few to none due to the pandemic. However, the announcement of Da Cookout brought a much-needed sense of excitement for us all. And on June 19, 2020 (and every June 19th since!), we brought hundreds of people out to celebrate Black joy and resilience, making it a life-changing event for the collective.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Shirmina Smith and Ruja Ballard met freshman year of school where both of us discovered our love for poetry. We were later introduced to a local youth program that helped enhance our writing, performance, and discipline. After participating in international poetry completions and aging out at the age of 19, Shirmina Smith and Ruja Ballard yearned for something more. We noticed that there wouldn’t be anymore programs that serviced us in the way that our youth program did. With this knowledge and a need for consistency, we took it upon ourselves to create Your Favorite Jawns. We felt as though we would no longer be serviced as youth and it was very important for us to have a safe space so we had to created something bigger than us to host that safe space. We announced our collective in 2017 where we hosted our first event. December 26th, 2017, we hosted Umoja in honor of Kwanza. Not only was this our first event, but it was also the first time we invited our community to celebrate Kwanza with us. Following the attendance and support of our first event, we decided that Your Favorite Jawns was well needed whether our events were centered around celebrations, community services, or revolutions. Since then, we’ve hosted and curated many events. Our all time favorite event to throw is our annual Juneteenth cookout which happens every year on June 19th. We are most proud of the consistency and support we receive from the community because it shows our level of development as a community. We think what sets us apart from other groups is our authentic and real approach to helping our community. We host parties, and festivals, but we also host free events, provide community service, and provide valuable information to our community. We’ve built relationships with the groups we’ve serviced. We want to be a household name; a resource for everyone regardless of your age, gender, sexual identity and more!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The goal is and will always be to play a huge part in the development of our city. From gentrification, poverty, and an increase in violent crimes, to the school-to-prison pipeline, we want to be the change that our city so desperately needs at this time. We are driven by necessity and obligation. We are driven by the kids that we work with on the daily because they are the mirrors of the worst and best of our society. We are driven by our need to think and create outside of the box but to still meet people where they are. Your Favorite Jawns’ mission is to be fresh and innovative in our art and community work while being so relatable that you wanna join our mission too!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being a creative is the gratification that comes with being able to bring an idea to life through whatever medium we chose! To be able to create anything is a superpower and should be treated as such. Creatives are the movers and shakers, but also the archivists. We are the glue and the paintbrush and the canvas. It excites us to be able to play and imagine within our culture and with our community and we are constantly motivated by our audience’s participation in our creative work and events.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @yourfavoritejawns_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourfavoritejawns/
• Twitter: @YFJ215
• Other: https://linktr.ee/Yfj215

Image Credits
-Julian MG (@jmooreg_) -@120ish –