Programs available

These workshops can be designed for various grade levels.

PERSONAL IDENTITY QUILT
Community building through Art and Oral history

The purpose of this experience is to provide an opportunity for members of a group to get to know one another and begin to get a sense of the group landscape. The focus is personal identity in your present community. Cultural identity may play a role in personal identity but it is not the sole focus of the activity. The outcome will be a paper quilt of identity portraits, summary words or phrases and paragraphs written about each person in the group.

Materials: origami paper of three different sizes - each person will need one of each size.
scissors, glue, pipe cleaners, markers, crayons, glitter, other color paper, pencils etc.

1. ME -IN -MY -COMMUNITY PAPER COLLAGE

Think of yourself in your community, your work, a person or persons who are significant to you. You may think of a ritual, a landscape, an event, a color, an emotion or a gesture that is expressive of who you are. With materials provided create a collage of your identity on the middle size paper. Allow one half hour or more if possible for this illustration.

2. A WORD OR A PHRASE

On the small origami paper, write a word or a phrase that summarizes your story which you have illustrated. Allow five or ten minutes for the writing.

3. INTERVIEW PARAGRAPH

Listen to one other person tell you his or her story about the quilt square. Then switch roles with that person and tell the story about your personal identity quilt square. Each person now writes a paragraph about the other person on the large origami paper. Allow thirty to forty minutes for this if possible.

4. QUILT HANGING AND VIEWING

As each duet finishes the tasks at hand, they may tape their squares in three quilts: one of illustrations, one of sayings and one of interview paragraphs. Each person's square should be placed in the same location of each quilt. At this time individuals will view the squares and informally talk with one another, asking questions and sharing about the process.

5. WHOLE GROUP CONCLUSION

In a circle, discuss any anecdotes, things learned, impressions of the group as a whole. Allow fifteen or twenty minutes for this discussion.

In order to facilitate the flow of this project, present the entire project with directions for each section. You may ask participants to make note of the directions or post an outline of the project sequence and timing. Time needed will vary with each group. This activity may be divided into two or three sessions, if a long block of time is unavailable.

Note: The paper quilt can be used with any age group. If it is being used as a part of a storytelling workshop, the interviews will be told as stories and developed using a story model.

TELL ME YOUR STORY

The purpose of this activity is to illustrate the dynamics of Oral Tradition and the power of individual stories.

1. Each person brings an object from home, preferably something important to them.

2. The group is divided into couples, person A and B.

3. Each person tells about their object while the other asks questions to learn as much detail as possible.

4. After both people have told each other about their object, they come together in a small group and tell the story of the object with as much detail as they can remember. (People are asked not to take notes of their interview but to rely on their memory. )

5. This exercise can be taken one step further. Person A tells person B about their object. Person B tells person C about the object from what she remembers. After everyone has finished interviewing, the whole group comes together and person C tell the group about the object belonging to A. C can tell the story of the object as if the object belonged to her.

This exercise can be used to show the importance of individual stories. Often we feel that our personal stories are not important and hearing them re-told is a way to validate the person to whom the story belongs. It is important that each person who is hearing their story told be asked to be aware of how they feel hearing their story re-told. Do they feel it was accurate, did they say more than was presented, did they feel heard? Etc.
This is also a way for children to learn language skills, retention and performance skills as they stand before their class mates and re-tell a story they have just heard.
For children and adults, a brief workshop in interviewing skills is often presented before the formal exercise or it may be a presented as a separate workshop.