Deep Center

In 2025 Deep celebrated our 17th year bringing literacy and cultural programming, community action, and youth leadership development to Savannah and surrounding Chatham County. We saw Deep Center continue to grow in new ways, proving time and again that when young people have the space, support, and tools to tell their stories, they can transform their own lives and the communities around them.

Our programs change lives by giving young people a new perspective on their place in their community, and the broader world. Sharing their voices through spoken word poetry, Deep's Slam Team performed their original works at events around Chatham County and at the Brave New Voices national competition in Madison, WI, where our team took home the “Spirit of Slam” award for their exceptional collaboration, community support, and the positive energy offered up to fellow poets from around the nation.

In addition to literacy and arts programming, our youth leadership work continues to grow stronger, anchored in community organizing and sustained through policy advocacy. Notably, our high school program, the Action Research Team, advanced important conversations on what Meaningful Learning means to them in our school system—advocating for approaches that honor youth voices, cultures, and full humanity. These youth-led insights are helping reform the systems that shape them, paving the way for a more equitable and inspiring educational future.

Deep's impact is clear. Our programs, which are offered for free to all students in participating public schools, lead to improvments in writing and leadership skills. After participation in Deep’s writing programs, 85% of measured youth showed growth in six key literacy skills: Content & Ideas, Vocabulary & Word Choice, Organization, Voice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions. And 92% of measured youth experienced increases in their confidence in themselves as leaders as a result of particpation in Deep’s advanced youth programs. 

Deep Center’s mission is to empower Savannah’s young people to thrive as learners, leaders, and agents of change. Through creative writing, cultural production, and art, Deep creates platforms for the city’s youth and the village of support around them, including their families and adult allies, to share stories, engage in debates, and make Savannah a more just and equitable place.

We envision a Savannah where our young people and their families thrive as learners, community leaders, and artists; and we envision a community, a government, and institutions that hear, value, and respond to their voices with equity, justice, and care.

The realities of poverty in Savannah are sobering: 20.4% of residents live below the poverty line, and 67% of public school students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Poverty is closely linked with trauma and significantly impacts a child’s ability to learn and thrive. Adults and families face life amid diminishing support and growing stigmatization, while Savannah’s youth, especially those from historically marginalized communities, often go unheard and uncelebrated. 

Our work is trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and promotes a roots-cause model of youth and community development through Direct Service, Narrative Change, and Systems Change. In school year 2024-2025, Deep’s award-winning youth programs delivered high-quality ARTS, CULTURAL, and ADVOCACY education across Savannah to 1020 individual youth at 23 different community sites, with workshops led by 62 local teaching artists, writers, and creative leaders -- showing Savannah's youth that futures in the arts are possible, for people from every neighborhood, and that their voices and stories matter. 

In everything we do, Deep prioritizes youth voices and experiences. One of our alumni recently had this to say: "I have gained so many connections with other young people in these programs as well as with Deep staff. I always feel so seen and heard in these spaces. . . . I love the fact that Deep provides life-changing experiences like attending Brave New Voices. Deep has had such a big impact on my life: because of my writing about Deep in my college applications, I've been able to get into the illustrious Spelman College and attend Howard University. I believe as many kids as possible should be able to experience these programs, and I always tell everyone how much I love and appreciate Deep Center."