Atlanta

Sarah Thompson, Nathan Corbitt, Rosa Dunkley 2010

2010. Atlanta—collaborated with Refugee Family Services (RFS) in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to provide both training and assistance in direct arts service. Artist-on-Call Sarah Thompson traveled with Dr. Nathan Corbitt to Atlanta in July 2010 and conducted a 2-day training for artists and RFS employees, along with a week-long camp for 75 children.



2011. Friday, July 8, 2011 kicked off the BuildaBridge Diaspora of Hope training for teachers at Refugee Family Services (RFS) in Stone Mountain, Georgia just outside of Atlanta. The objective of the training is to prepare RFS teachers to use the BuildaBridge classroom model in the coming week of their summer camp to foster hope and holistic development in their students. The teachers being trained created art pieces that answered the question, “why are you here?” As they shared the meaning of the pieces, reoccurring themes of creating safe spaces, supporting families, and fostering hope emerged.

These themes, their reasons for being present at the training and for working with the children at RFS, are aligned with the work and mission of BuildaBridge. Through the BuildaBridge training, the teachers will have the tools and a clear model to implement to be intentional and purposeful in the use of the arts.

As training continued, the teachers, acting as students, experienced a sample lesson in the BuildaBridge model. They built a heart sculpture together and danced through the room being the blood flowing through the body. They were fully engaged as they discovered the art as metaphor already present in the lesson. Like the many BuildaBridge teaching artists before them, these teachers are also like the blood in the body carrying oxygen and nutrients to the community.




The group chose a heart theme for the coming week and began planning art experiences with many potential metaphors emerging that will connect the functions and symbol of the heart to important life lessons infused with a message of hope. They will use dance, music, theater, and visual arts to strengthen and expand students’ artistic, social, spiritual, and academic skills and knowledge.




The teachers then worked together to create the curriculum for the week and they practiced parts of their lessons with one another. The lead music teacher practiced her planned welcome ritual. We followed her through the halls of RFS while playing a rhythm on our body and on different cabinets, railings, and walls to hear the different sounds while maintaining the group’s rhythm. The lead dance teacher taught step routines in a circle that increased in complexity and speed; she will be using this to teach how the heart increasingly beats faster the more active you are. The giggling was uncontrollable as the lead theater teacher had us experiment with theater improvisation by being oxygen, nutrients, and waste inside the body, simultaneously teaching the function of the blood and the rules of theater improvisation. The week is off to a fantastic start.

Friday, July 8, 2011 kicked off the BuildaBridge Diaspora of Hope training for teachers at Refugee Family Services (RFS) in Stone Mountain, Georgia just outside of Atlanta. The objective of the training is to prepare RFS teachers to use the BuildaBridge classroom model in the coming week of their summer camp to foster hope and holistic development in their students. The teachers being trained created art pieces that answered the question, “why are you here?” As they shared the meaning of the pieces, reoccurring themes of creating safe spaces, supporting families, and fostering hope emerged.






These themes, their reasons for being present at the training and for working with the children at RFS, are aligned with the work and mission of BuildaBridge. Through the BuildaBridge training, the teachers will have the tools and a clear model to implement to be intentional and purposeful in the use of the arts. As training continued, the teachers, acting as students, experienced a sample lesson in the BuildaBridge model. They built a heart sculpture together and danced through the room being the blood flowing through the body. They were fully engaged as they discovered the art as metaphor already present in the lesson. Like the many BuildaBridge teaching artists before them, these teachers are also like the blood in the body carrying oxygen and nutrients to the community. The group chose a heart theme for the coming week and began planning art experiences with many potential metaphors emerging that will connect the functions and symbol of the heart to important life lessons infused with a message of hope. They will use dance, music, theater, and visual arts to strengthen and expand students’ artistic, social, spiritual, and academic skills and knowledge. The teachers then worked together to create the curriculum for the week and they practiced parts of their lessons with one another. The lead music teacher practiced her planned welcome ritual. We followed her through the halls of RFS while playing a rhythm on our body and on different cabinets, railings, and walls to hear the different sounds while maintaining the group’s rhythm. The lead dance teacher taught step routines in a circle that increased in complexity and speed; she will be using this to teach how the heart increasingly beats faster the more active you are. The giggling was uncontrollable as the lead theater teacher had us experiment with theater improvisation by being oxygen, nutrients, and waste inside the body, simultaneously teaching the function of the blood and the rules of theater improvisation. The week is off to a fantastic start.

Refugee Family Services invited BuildaBridge Artists on Call Julia Crawford and Sarah Rohrer to lead their second Diaspora of Hope Camp. As part of a Captain Planet themed summer-long camp, the team chose Heart as the theme of the camp. Students learned about and explored their physical and emotional hearts in four arts classes: visual arts, dance, theatre, and music. Click here to read about the music class's performance in the final celebration! Celebration

BuildaBridge and Refugee Family Services (RFS) were waiting for the last act of their BuildaBridge Arts Week Celebration, and all eyes were on a smaller boy at the front of Class 4. Kay Do So projected a sense of serenity and calm as he stood with his back to the audience, facing his class, arms high and ready to begin conducting. No one had coached him to stand with such poise; it just came naturally over the course of the week as he became more knowledgeable about what sounds he wanted produced and how to bring them about. With a flick of the wrist, he signaled his classmates to begin.

On the first day of arts camp, their music class had become a near free-for-all, as each student plucked, banged, and blew on instruments to their hearts’ content, with little regard for any guidance or instruction. While I knew how far the class had come since then, I was curious to see how well they listened to one another and controlled their voices and instruments. Some of the boys from Class 4 were so excited, that when Class 3 went up before them for their music performance, they began chanting along quietly, elbowing each other and smiling. I didn’t need to worry. By the end of the week, Ms. Josie had successfully harnessed that energy, and taught them how to control their music and themselves. In fact, the class had been planning and plotting their performance earlier that day.

Kay Do So kept his wand and his entire body low to the ground, signaling his friends to begin quietly, as they had discussed. Many of the kids imitated him, ducking their heads down near the drums as they lightly hit it, bending conspiratorially towards one another as they began saying his name in rhythm. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the want, and when it pointed to another classmate, as a group they began chanting that child’s name, much to her delight.

As Kay Do So raised the want higher and higher, the whole class strummed, drummed, sang and smiled harder and harder. They had been waiting for this moment, and their eyes shone with excitement, as the whole room reverberated with their rhythm. They ended by singing their version of “We Will Rock You.” Each child had the chance to sing one of the lines of the verses they had written, and they all sang the chorus together, ending with a cheer, “Class 4!”

The class had begun with the metaphor of the heartbeat, that each person and each group has a unique heartbeat, and that music is the heartbeat of the world. That first day, each child played only what they wanted to, how they wanted to, or if they wanted to. By the last day, they came together as a class, listened to one another, and responded musically to one another. They found their class heartbeat

The next day, I found their community heartbeat. Rosa Dunkley, RFS’s Youth Development Coordinator and one of our lovely hosts, drove Julia and I around some of the apartments where the kids live. Turning into some complexes felt like entering another world, with refugees living together from Somalia, Thailand, Bosnia, Burma, Iraq, Sudan, and Burundi, to name a few. I saw people living together: hanging laundry on a line, walking on errands, talking to neighbors, or watching kids play soccer and bicycle. Some of the complexes looked clean and safe, and even had a pool. Some still had the debris from when one of the buildings had burned down, taking the lives of several of the youth with it. Some, Rosa shared, had landlords that had stolen from the refugees. One no longer had many refugees because of tensions with the Americans also living there. Several times we spotted “our” kids, playing and talking and living. When they saw us, we smiled and waved like crazy people. Whether or not they saw us, I saw them, and I heard them. I had spent a week with them talking about heartbeats, but I had not yet discovered theirs. It is strong, communal, resilient, and hopeful.