Fort Worth WORTH (1080 KRLD) - A free concert tomorrow night became part of Fort Worth's Unity Month purely by accident.
Every year, Unity Unlimited puts on Your Voice Unleashed -- a free one-week fine arts workshop for kids ages 13 to 19.
Its executive director is Dione Sims, who's the granddaughter of Opal Lee, the Grandmother of Juneteenth.
"The goal was to have clinicians -- Black, White, Hispanic, -- teach them songs," says Sims. "And they go, 'Oh you enjoyed that, didn't you?' So now, it's called exposure -- don't tell me what you don't like or who you don't like until you walk a mile in their shoes."
This year's workshop was rescheduled to this week since Sims and Lee were preoccupied in the wake of Juneteenth becoming a national holiday this year.
This week happens to be in the middle of Fort Worth Unity Month.
"This was originally going to be done at the end of June, as a part of our Juneteenth celebration," Sims says. "And they (the Circle of Clergy) were talking about wanting to have Unity Day. I said, 'Well, then you've got to have young people in unity on your program.' And they said, 'We love that!'"
So in a backdoor fashion, Your Voice Unleashed became part of Fort Worth Unity Month.
"When I asked the pastors -- the circle of clergy -- if the young people could be a part of it, they said, 'Sure. It's a great way to show the unity that we want,'" says Sims.
The kids in Your Voice Unleashed -- which includes choir, dance, and mime -- have been rehearsing all week and will put on a free concert Saturday night.
"The kids will do six songs," Sims says, "and then the dancers will have a number and the mimes will do a number, and then they'll do their combined number as our grand finale."
The free show takes place Saturday evening at the Will Rogers Auditorium, 3401 W. Lancaster Ave., and it starts at 7:00 p.m.
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