Cartonera Workshop @ Harvard

The Paper Picker Press isn’t all about after-school! Today we hosted an open workshop spreading the pedagogy of the program to interested members of Romance Languages and Literatures Faculty and Graduate Students at Harvard University. In the three-hour workshop, we developed techniques of Literary Criticism, Interpretation, and Meta-Cognition through the media of re-writing, visual and performing arts. Theory (as it inevitably does) followed from play, building on presentations in Romance Studies 200, with Prof. Campbell assisted by Adriana Gutierrez and Doris Sommer. The message: Sophisticated lessons in criticism can be facilitated through a variety of arts and play. We put that theory to the test using Borges’ wonderfully idiomatic text, “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths.” Luckily, we made it out of Borge's magical textual maze alive with a few "novel" lessons under our overstuffed belts.

Thank you to Kathy Coviello for all her help in organizing this event.

First day of class

Chapter 2 of the Paper Picker Press officially began today. Six schools have adopted us and we started our creative literacy program in our first only hours ago. A painter and a visual artist braved kids ages K-5 to introduce the first of many productive sessions all geared around a single text. A musician and a bookmaker wowed an audience of seven to nine year olds. And so the love of reading begins for 40+ young literati…

Artists, I’d like to introduce you to HASI…

Representatives from all six HASI programs met our artists today—enthusiastically hand-matched, of course, by our Paper Picker Press coordinator, Emily Ullman. I won’t say it was love at first site, but it was close: Schools seeking photography programs found their Polaroid (instant gratification, that is), while those craving book-makers were pleased to meet the charming Bob Davies…the list goes on and on. After a brief introduction, artists drove through short texts, explaining their ideas for exploding the narrative into a variety of productive “games.” Then we played one such game, asking our HASI program reps to draw characters described by their fellow guinea pigs. The results were magical. “All Summer in a Day” has never produced such wonderfully varied responses: “What was the teacher in the next room doing? Sowing like a good teacher! That’s why her kids didn’t get into trouble!” What will they come up with next?

For our end, Cultural Agents issued pre-assessment surveys chronicling the wants and needs of HASI program leaders as well as all the logistical goodies that make real-life programs tick.

Thank you so much to HASI once again for arranging this meeting of the minds!

Open Call to Artist-Educators

We’re hosting an open meeting with local area artists interested in partnering with our Paper Picker Press to implement the new program to those HASI programs that decide to pick us up. The meeting will be this Thursday afternoon, September 27th. We’ll run through the history of our creative literacy project and try to elucidate the essential role of artists: all you need is an openness to the intersections between arts and literacy-- and, well, any artistic skill under the sun!

Calling all painters, sculptors, sketch-artists, graphic designers, weavers, dancers, stompers, photographers, dramatists, musicians, set-makers, and PAPER PICKERS…

HASI Presentation

It’s been a whirlwind since this summer’s pilot programs of the Paper Picker Press. HASI (Harvard Achievement Support Initiative) invited us to present our creative literacy program to their core schools and after-school programs on September 20th. We ventured across campus to make our big pitch: We shared the you tube video of our summer pilots, explained the history of Cultural Agents Initiative (www.culturalagents.org), and the need for a creative literacy program using a multiplicity of arts! It was a mouthful, to be sure, but seemed to meet rave reviews. When the dust settled, HASI’s wonderful staff – Joan Matsalia (Associate Director), Lisa Moellman (Assistant Director), and Emily Smit (Coordinator)—informed us that six schools were interested in discussing the Paper Picker Press “trimmed” to meet their individualized needs! More to follow…

Last Day Zumix

I'm really going to miss these folks! They were all wonderful. Bob and I finished up the literary/performance work and the CD books. We first ironed out the mini-performances from yesterday and added some narration. The students read some of their pieces and then performed the original song they wrote. This was debuted to the Zumix staff who kindly gathered to support. The highlight, I'd say, was the Memory piece by a student who delivered it in stand up comedy style to a room full of supportive shouts.
The students also finished their books. They look wonderful and are really practical for a group of musicians.
It was fabulous and I hope we can stay in touch with these folks (I know I'll be watching their band perform).
Thanks everyone for a great two weeks!
Emily

Zumix Day 5

It was a lovely day of bookmaking today. Bob came with me and he worked with the kids to lay out plans for their cd books. They did the cutting, gluing, and folding...very cool.
We then rounded them all up and worked in mini-performances using the Image stuff we did from yesterday. They worked with a narrative written by a member of the group and then built performances around it.
The performances worked fairly well but their energy was a bit scattered and it was tough to pull them away from their individual book projects (things to remember for next time!)
Overall these kids are wonderful, the only challenge is a highly fluxuating number of students. There are a core of 6 students and then we range everday between these six and about 13, not bad when this is the problem I'd say.
Thanks,
Emily