This fall, I will be conducting a series of creative storytelling workshops with student groups in the Bay Area. Through a wide variety of artistic mediums, I want to explore perceptions about migration. In each workshop, I’ll share some of the stories that I learned and projects that I facilitated during my previous projects in India and Central America, and then ask students about their own journeys : what is it like for them to get to school in the morning? To visit their grandparents and cousins? To bring home the food they eat?
The collective voyages of these students compose a narrative of the way the Bay Area’s unique culture has emerged, and how it continues to evolve. I want students to step up and tell their stories in a way that an audience will understand across boundaries of language, class, and nationality. I’ll bring a good supply of pencils, cameras, colors, papers, scissors, books, songs, and ribbons; the goal is to figure out a universal language along the way.
Depending on its context, migration is simultaneously an ideal and a consequence. Ideally a choice, the freedom to move around represents independence and privilege, particularly treasured values in the story of the United States. However, the reality is frequently a burden, sometimes imposed by desperate circumstances. The mobile and dynamic populations in the Bay Area illustrate the entire spectrum of these journeys. Funding from Spot.us would allow me to spend more time on both sides of the Bay and collaborate with a greater number of organizations here.
Along with the final article I will post frequent blog updates throughout the workshop series in an image-centered style similar to the way I wrote about my previous two projects, displaying artwork and sharing extraordinary experiences (that coverage can be viewed at http://mavenkind.wordpress.com). I will be able to produce and share more digital video and photography than was possible from abroad, allowing me to display more diverse mediums and detailed coverage throughout the workshop and writing process.
I am a writer and educator, most recently returned from a Fulbright research scholarship in India. In Hyderabad, I developed and implemented an arts-based curriculum with underprivileged primary school students. We used visual arts, music, movement, photography, video, dance, puppetry, gardening, and other creative forms of expression to communicate the children’s stories to an audience beyond their immediate community. I conducted workshops in several classrooms, and primarily worked with the Sphoorti Foundation, an organization providing care and education to 85 students from southern India (http://www.sphoorti.org). Before moving to India, I worked at an afterschool program in the Mission District where I taught lessons in environmental consciousness through art. This was where I first observed the potential of art-based expression, especially for children who find it difficult to express themselves in English. While I lived in the city I also worked for a San Francisco-based travel guide, and after the school year ended I proposed a project to them that would allow me to better understand my students back in the Mission. I wrote content for 6 months from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama, learning Spanish and stories everywhere I traveled.
The final article for Spot.us will be one component of this project; beyond the funding, I am hoping for support from Spot.us as an indication of community interest in my questions about how small voices can make themselves heard. Workshops will be tailored to each participating student group based on age, number of students, available materials, time, and specific demographics, with each workshop requiring 10-20 hours of preparation and around $25 of supplies. I am currently able to budget time and money to work comprehensively with only one or two groups in the Bay Area. Spot.us funding will allow me to partner with a greater number of organizations in the Bay Area, and produce a story that reflects the mobility and constant transformations which distinguish this community.
