About the Founders'

Founders
Camille Ameen, Co-Founder, Board Member, Artist Leader Bio
Jonathan Zeichner, Co-Founder, Executive Director Bio [Email]

 

Camille Ameen and Jonathan Zeichner
Co-Founders Camille Ameen and Jonathan Zeichner


   
Camille Ameen

Co-Founder, Board Member, Master Trainer & Artist Leader

Camille began her career as an actress. She has performed in over 90 plays and in over 25 Film and TV shows including: Othello on Broadway, the Obie-award winning K - Impressions of Kafka's The Trial, leading roles in major regional theaters, ER, Gilmore Girls, Melrose Place, Roseanne and LA Law. She taught voice and acting to professionals for 15 years at Sal Romeo's Friends And Artists Studio. Between 1992-2005, she taught Council (a listening and speaking practice, adapted from indigenous peoples, to build community, encourage self-reflection and dialogue on issues of concern to youth) at Crossroads School and then at Palms Middle School. For 9 years, she led arts workshops with Imagination Workshop for disenfranchised populations, including homeless families, the criminally insane and homeless addicted veterans in recovery.

In 1996, due to the urgent need for in-depth violence prevention/intervention oriented programs for middle-school youth, Ms. Ameen co-founded Inside Out Community Arts with Jonathan Zeichner. She was Co-Director of Inside Out until July 2007 and continues her commitment as a board member, master trainer and artist leader. Camille has appeared on panels and numerous print and broadcast media on behalf of Inside Out, youth and the Arts. She had the pleasure of bringing Inside Out graduate Brandon Tillis to the White House to accept the Coming Up Taller Award in 2006. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and holds a Professional Designation in Arts Education from the LA County Arts Commission.
The arts, actually the theater, truly saved my life, in that when I was growing up, life was rigid and bereft of the Arts. My imagination was puny and my fear was huge. I went into acting because it gave me a safe place to express myself and I saw it as an opportunity for healing the spirit just as a doctor provides healing for the body. Over time, I realized that acting alone did not fulfill all my needs. And so began the search for other ways to use what I felt I do best for the good of others.

I've always been attracted to a challenge. I started working with middle school youth and my life turned around. Sharing my love of the Arts with young people was thrilling. To assist in their growth, their journey of self-discovery and even transformation has been fulfilling beyond measure. I've had the good fortune of watching so many of these precious beings reach beyond what they thought was their capacity and blossom. And they, in turn, continue to teach me to be in the moment and reach beyond what I thought was my capacity.

Knowing that I can contribute to making a difference in young people's lives and therefore, in the future of our planet fills me with gratitude. As Co-Director for 11-1/2 years I received tremendous satisfaction developing new ideas and refining old ones, training new artists, helping us expand to more sites and reach more children, inspiring others to view the Arts and at-risk youth through a different lens, breaking through the walls that separate us, bringing families and communities together, and helping to make the Arts a part of our daily life.

Jonathan Zeichner

Executive Director

Jonathan grew up in New Haven Connecticut and later settled in the San Francisco Bay Area where he built houses and worked onstage as an actor. Moving to Los Angeles in 1988, Jonathan studied filmmaking at UCLA while performing, writing and directing for stage, film and television.

A longtime guardian for his eldest brother, a musician suffering from schizophrenia, Jonathan joined the Imagination Workshop at UCLA's Neuro Psychiatric Institute in 1989, a base from which he worked with other theater artists to lead workshops for homeless clients and patients at shelters, hospitals, and forensic psychiatric institutions.

In 1992, as Artistic Director, Jonathan took the program into the V.A. Hospital in West L.A. to work with veterans recovering from drug and alcohol addictions and chronic homelessness. In 1993, in response to the civil unrest in Los Angeles, Jonathan gathered a group of theatre artists to create and implement The School Project, a prevention/intervention after-school program to give at-risk middle youth the social skills, tools and inspiration to make positive life choices and become active members of their communities. In 1996 Jonathan invited actor Camille Ameen to join him in founding Inside Out Community Arts to expand The School Project and implement additional programs for at-risk youth and families.

Jonathan founded DreamReel Productions, where he produced, wrote and directed the feature film, Hash Brown's. In addition to his work in psychiatric and homeless settings, Jonathan has taught writing to incarcerated youth and presented alternative arts methodologies at colleges, prisons, and education conferences. Jonathan is the originator of many Inside Out workshops and, for 11 years, was the Technical Director for Inside Out's stage productions.

"Art is as nourishing for the human spirit as food is for the body."
When I was growing up, I thought art was something found only in museums and coffee table books. My elementary & middle school art classes were forgettable. All in all, I saw the Arts as little more than an interesting diversion.

At 15, that all changed. I was a latchkey kid in the inner-city (New Haven), dabbling in drugs and with no particular direction. The Viet Nam war was still on and I knew I was against it, but I didn't really feel I had any power to do anything about it - or any of the other world problems that worried me, for that matter. I was bored at school and had contemplated dropping out, but a new "alternative" high school had just opened in town and I got myself into it - at least, I figured, it would be less rigid than regular school.

When my anthropology teacher created a theater department, I jumped in with both feet, and that's when I really began to understand the power of the Arts. Our first production was Arthur Kopit's Indians, and we projected huge slides of Native American massacres and the My Lai massacre onto the walls of the theater while the play was going on. Standing-room-only audiences engaged in heated debates about Viet Nam, genocide and social justice, and the school board threatened to shut us down. A lot of people really took notice - including me. Our second production was Lysistrata - that caused even more of an uproar. Those experiences provided long lasting inspiration and influenced my approach and understanding of the Arts as a medium for social change.

In 1992 I was living in Los Angeles, working as an actor, writer, director while running a theater-based nonprofit organization working in psychiatric and homeless settings. Along came the Rodney King Incident, with its heartbreaking images and messages and Los Angeles was swept up in a tidal wave of rage, fear and violence. The racial and economic polarization, the indignation, the spilled blood and the rising smoke all demanded responses.

In the wake of the unrest, I talked with other theater artists about the need to help kids develop alternative sources of strength so they would be able to affect change without resorting to violence. I saw a direct correlation between the absence of arts content and instruction in public schools, and the societal and cultural disenfranchisement of public school youth. Without a developed set of tools for creative expression, kids become frustrated, bottled up, angry (I know I did) and they often lash out with antisocial and destructive behaviors. The school system in Los Angeles has been a mess for a while: 40%-60% of the kids that enter kindergarten don't graduate from high school. Of those that do graduate, only 3% go on to college. Our school system is preparing hundreds of thousands of young people to flip burgers and jack cars.

There's poverty of the pocketbook and there's poverty of the soul and they're both handicaps in our efforts to lead fulfilled lives and make a better world. One of the many powerful aspects of art (in all its forms) is that you don't need money to create, perform, show and share it. Art transcends class, race, and cultural barriers. And, the deeper we dig in our creative processes, the richer and more precious veins we strike. Truth, Beauty, Love, Pain, Desire, Joy, Sorrow; it's these essential ingredients of the human spirit that join us all, and that we draw on to create art - and they will never run out.