Projects
Colonial Christian Academy Class
As a part of the Women's Well-Being Initiative with the USC Women's Studies Program, Graduate Certificate student, Amanda Reyelt, is teaching a class at the Colonial Christian Academy in West Columbia, SC. The school serves underprivileged students from the Greater Columbia area and surrounding communities. The class is called "Creative Arts for What?" The goal of the class is to provide students with the opportunity to creatively express themselves through visual art, theater, writing, speech, and music. In order to have a rich liberating education, the Women's Studies Program believes that through an interdisciplinary approach, we can serve the West Columbia area by integrating special programs that meet their needs. Colonial Christian Academy is a piece of this puzzle. The students are interested in the creative arts and how they can be tools of community building and self-expression. Through the arts, we are better able to understand ourselves and as a result understand others better. With Colonial Christian Academy engaging in the creative arts, their students are making a statement in the lives of all around them as to how they define themselves in the world. These students are choosing to make a difference in their communities by practicing art for social change.
Community Juvenile Arbitration Workshops
Currently, the Women's Wellbeing Initiative is planning a series of fall workshops for Community Juvenile Arbitration. Previously, Julie Jacobson, a former Women's Studies graduate assistant, worked with Juvenile Arbitration to create two rather stunning murals in West Columbia and Columbia. This year, however, we're developing a workshop based around oppression and liberation. This workshop is structured to give adolescents the tools needed to recognize oppressive situations in their lives, or situations and events that generate low self-esteem, cause depression, or create negative feelings toward others. The goal here is to try to help these adolescents find liberation from oppression. As for our approach, we're using art-particularly the fine arts and writing-to examine the ways in which oppression functions in these teenagers' lives. After pinpointing and discussing the many types of oppression that affect youth today, we make it our goal to help these teens learn how to reach a state of liberation. While we cannot not provide resolute answers to the individual problems facing these youth, it is our goal to propose techniques to help these youth find their own answers and be confident with their selves. Some of these techniques include creating abstract artworks, writing poetry, making collages, and having discussions with peers. In the end, we want these youth to be able to recognize different forms of oppression and to have the tools to creatively manipulate this oppression and move toward a sense of liberation or enlightenment.
Colonial Christian Academy Mural
The Women's Wellbeing Initiative is also working on another mural project with Colonial Christian Academy. The mural, created by Julie Jacobson, was specifically designed for a 12 by 20 foot wall in the school's chapel. Right now, the chapel is full of international flags created by the students, but the school's director wanted something a little more vibrant on the walls. As for the images behind the mural design, the school wanted the mural to expand on their international theme, so Julie tried to represent several cultures. She used the Serengeti landscape, with a bayoubab tree to represent African culture; a crane to symbolize Asian culture; a brilliant sun signifying a Native American sunburst; pink Dahlias, which are Mexico's national flower; and fish to signify Christianity. Once we transfer a basic image of the mural onto the chapel wall, the students will begin painting, and, hopefully, we'll turn Colonial Christian Academy's chapel into an international masterpiece.
Glenforest School
In addition, in the near future, the Women's Wellbeing Initiative plans to team up with Glenforest School in West Columbia. As their website notes, "Glenforest School is a K-12 private, non-profit, day-school for students of average to above-average intelligence with learning differences and focusing issues." Within the next month, we'll begin working with Glenforest to develop an arts for critical awareness program, in which we'll use arts such as writing, theater, and the visual arts to encourage the students' creativity and uniqueness and to help strengthen their self-esteem.
365 Plays
We're also working in collaboration with a larger project entitled 365. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wrote 365 plays, one for every day of the year, and now these plays are being produced in a network of theaters across the country. The goal for the project is that each state produces all 365 plays in one year, with different theater groups taking on the plays a week or two at a time. For February of 2007, the Women's Wellbeing Initiative plans to collaborate with West Columbia residents to produce a week's worth of Parks's plays for the South Carolina network. We would like this to be a community effort, with West Columbia residents playing an integral part in the entire production process. As for the actual performances, the plays will be performed in certain West Columbia schools and venues. As the end of the semester creeps up, we'll be sure to keep everyone posted on exact dates and times for all events related to 365.
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