Session One Revised: One Year Later

Newtown Creek Celebration 2013 Day 1 Boot Puppets with Teaching Artists Heather Nielsen and Sherry Teitelbaumby Kevin Ray

Repeating a community based arts project one year later offers a wonderful opportunity: a chance to do things differently the second time around! After reflecting on our 2012 session plans for Newtown Creek Celebration: Puppet Parade and Pageant, teaching artists Heather Nielsen, Sherry Teitelbaum and I realized that we overlooked an important element: we did not incorporate basic puppetry concepts into our session designs. We never asked the youth questions like: “What is a puppet?”, “Who uses puppets and what do they use them for?” and “As puppeteers, how do we bring inanimate object to life?” We didn’t facilitate hands on activities to develop the youth’s basic puppetry skills. Instead, we jumped right into building puppets and creating a show. Although our 2012 culminating event was very successful, we wished we had built the youths’ puppeteering skills before we began creating the show. So when we received two grants from Brooklyn Arts Council to reprise the project in 2013, we were determined to take a different approach, starting on day one. Read More...
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Support Newtown Creek Celebration

My collaborators, Sherry Teitelbaum, Heather Nielsen and I dreamed up a way to use puppetry, pageantry and parade elements to engage young people with an environmental problem right in their backyard: polluted Newtown Creek.

Did you know that 17 to 30 million gallons of oil have been spilled into Newton Creek?

Currently, the creek is being cleaned up. But when the cleanup is complete, who do you think will be of voting age to demand public green space? Today’s young people! In a fun and creative way, our arts project will begin to plant the seeds of agency in today’s youth.

But we can’t do the project without your support.
Visit the campaign and make a contribution today by clicking on widget below!

And guess what? We have lots of perks for everyone who contributes! Visit the campaign page to see perks ranging from posters, to photos of the event, even a puppet from the show!

If you can’t contribute to the campaign, there’s other ways you can help make this project happen
  • Visit the campaign and click the share tools right under the video. You can “like” the campaign and send it to Facebook or “tweet” it to send it to your followers.
  • Forward this email to folks you know who might be interested in supporting youth development, environmental, or arts projects
  • Join us at the final event on August 23rd at 3:30 pm in McGolrick Park, Brooklyn. It’s free and open to the public!
Thank you for taking time to read about our project and for visiting our campaign’s website! I look forward to your support and hope to see you in McGolrick park on August 23rd! Send me an email and let me know if you'll be there!

All the Best,

Kevin
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