Our Partnership With

Peel Dem Layers Back

We are proud supporters of Peel Dem Layers Back, a mental health awareness nonprofit. Founded with the mission of equipping, educating and empowering Black Men and Boys with tools to live a mentally healthy life while utilizing the lens of Hip-Hop culture. PDLB was founded by hip-hop artist and Mental Health Advocate, Archie Green.

Archie is a Black man with lived experience, having been clinically diagnosed with depression in 2014. Two years later, he wrote a song about his experience going to therapy from a Hip-Hop perspective and the song went viral. This inspired Green to start PDLB with a mission of breaking the stigma using an unconventional approach to mental health advocacy. The organization began in grassroots and has since formed into a nonprofit (with Arts Cleveland serving as their fiscal sponsor) with goals of expanding its reach throughout Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

"To me, wellness looks like making my mental and physical health a top priority daily. That is achieved through daily meditation, eating right, and practicing self-care."

PDLB’s approach to mental health awareness is executed through workshops with youth at high schools and colleges and the production and hosting of concerts with various other local musicians that also advocate for mental health in the Black community. PDLB also partners with major health organizations to highlight the various resources available to the Black community in Cleveland and beyond. Over the past four years they have also produced groundbreaking Public Art Projects that addressed mental health and diversity and inclusion in the arts & culture space in Cleveland.

In 2019, PDLB partnered with the Lexington-Bell Community Center and the Cleveland Orchestra for the innovative project, “My Violin Weighs A Ton.” The four and a half month project fused hip-hop and classical music to address areas of growth with the students,
aged 4-14, at Lexington-Bell teaching them to play hip-hop on classical guitars in front of their community at the world renowned Severance Hall. Their annual fundraising event, “The Root Of It All,” pairs live entertainment with informative presentations from
mental health practitioners that are POCs. In 2020, The Root Of It All: Self-Love In Quarantine, saw PDLB partnering with the Greater Cleveland chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI Greater Cleveland) to produce a virtual webinar that had
over 4,000 viewers and raised $2000.

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