Santa Monica Festival

Dates: Saturday, May 9, 2009
Location: Clover Park, 2600 Ocean Park Blvd. Santa Monica

Share in the SmART Schools West Project:
SmART Schools West participating schools are invited to share in an experience at the Santa Monica Festival by staging a Green Cordel. The Green Cordel will celebrate and showcase environment themed work created by students from four SmART Schools sites in Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District: Edison Language Academy, John Muir Elementary, McKinley Elementary and Will Rogers Learning Community. In addition it will offer festival visitors thier own opportunity to reflect upon and respond to a variety of thought provoking green themed images, literature and facts and place their creative work on display. The Green Cordel will allow the public to add comments to all of the displayed works, bringing one more level of interactivity to the project.

Background
“Literatura de cordel” (string literature) has been a part of Brazilian culture for over a hundred years, descended from a Portuguese practice that began in the 17th century. Cordel literature are pamphlets that hang from a piece of string (cordel) in the public places where they are sold. Typically, they are narrative poems with woodcut illustrations on the cover, often done by the poet himself. The work frequently expresses a powerful personal or political message. Acquired through SmART Schools professional development and Inspired by the its history and potential, Santa Monica teachers are using the cordel in their classrooms to create and showcase meaningful student work. It is a powerful tool that employs easy, inexpensive materials (paper, pencils, string and clips). Students can make their work public at their own pace – the process is open ended: work can be taken down, edited, and replaced. This democratic means of publication symbolizes how creative work can be a social, community process. It vividly embodies SmART Schools core principle of learning in and through the arts.

The Green Cordel will consist of four parts:

1. One cord, Student Cordel, will a display a selection of finished student work created around green themes. Students, whose work is on display, will be available to answer questions, talk about their work and discuss the process. Works will be both literary and visual. Throughout the day the public will not only experience the creative work, but they are allowed and encouraged to interact with it by posting comments (reflections, compliments, questions) on the student work with post-it notes.


2. Cordel work is often created as a response to specific images, literature or events. A second cord will contain a selection of green themed images, poetry, literature and facts - appropriate to multiple age levels - provided for inspiration.


3. A set of work tables, manned by student docents, myself and adult volunteers, will make simple materials available for festival visitors to create their own written or visual works. Each ‘seating’ of festival attendees will have the purpose and methods of the “Green Cordel” explained. Students will guide visitors in the making and display of their work. Individuals will explore the cordel containing thought provoking items and create their pieces in response.


4. A third, Open Cordel, cord will be strung as a gallery for works created by visitors. Individuals will be welcome to post comments on these works as well. Student docents will manage dispensing of post-its for both cordels. Visitors who have created work are welcome to return any time and edit or revise their piece as inspired to do so or in response to remarks attached to their work.

Join us for this exciting event!

Contact

Lynn Robb
Site Coordinator, SmART Schools West
lynn.robb@verizon.net
310.392.5560

SmART Schools SMFestival.pdf

Fact Sheet 2009.pdf

Habla: The Center for Culture and Language

SmART Schools has launched a bold and innovative pilot program as part of an exciting international partnership with Habla: The Center for Culture and Language, a lab school and an international center based in Merida, Mexico. A group of individuals in the US, Mexico, and Brazil joined together to begin to create an international network of artists, educators, and organizational leaders with the idea that policy, research, and best teaching practices in the field of arts education need to be shared across borders. This international partnership has resulted in Habla, the lab school and an international center based in Merida. The architects of Habla—including arts leaders such as Richard Deasy, Nick Rabkin, Arnie Aprill, and Doris Sommer believe that cultural immersion is one of the most powerful possibilities for transforming both educators and youth.

Merida, the capital city of the state of Yucatan serves as the ideal lens for teachers and artists to experience the complex mix of cultures that exists in many Latin American countries and communities. The fusion of ancient, colonial, and modern culture is evident in the architecture and works of art present both in and around the city. Ancient Mayan ruins—including the famous Chichin Itza and Uxmal—are a short drive from the city and Mayan towns surround the city of Merida. Haciendas, churches, and state buildings located both in the center of the city are examples of the Spanish colonial influence. The people of the Yucatan are a unique mix with influences from the Mayan, Spanish, and more recent international cultures from around the globe. Merida is the perfect place to introduce visitors to the complexity of Mexican and Hispanic culture and to challenge the often homogenizing use of these terms. In the Mexico-based institute, teachers/artists leaders will experience, the complexity of the arts and culture in the Yucatan, and have conversations about how students from all cultural backgrounds bring a vast set of cultural and artistic resources to the classroom. The institute will challenge educators' cultural assumptions and supportively help them to reflect on their own cultures as well as the cultures they are experiencing.

The SmART Schools and Habla partnership will conduct ongoing professional development, designed and facilitated by Habla's co-founders and co-directors Kurt Wootton and Maria del Mar Patron-Vazquez, and SmART Schools founder and director, Eileen Mackin. This professional development will be offered to participating SmART Schools arts educators, classroom teachers, administrators, and program master teaching artists, from both the East and West Coasts of the United States.