by Stefani Weeden-Smith, Teaching Artist

As I drove to Beyond Housing’s Pagedale location the first Saturday of the Blueprint for a Dream: Viking Advantage! program, I found myself having butterflies about this new journey of guiding a group of young people and mentors  through their creative process of dreammaking.  The drive was filled with thinking about my own dreams those that I kept close to my heart, those dreams that I did not even know that I had, and those dream that changed in order for me to have new dreams.  I also was remembering the support I got from family, friends, and mentors so that I could achieve these dreams.  The nerves I feel were the great honor and responsibility there is in witnessing the process that an individual goes through to create the map of dreams. When I arrived to the space, I felt an instant sense of calm seeing the staff  including  the other teaching artist Jane Ellen Ibur, Gloria Brainsby from Beyond Housing, and the Pulitzer’s Emily Augsburger and Gina Martinez. 

With all journeys there were some false starts and stops as we found items missing and new turns we had to take to begin the day, but yet we started our first morning with our 16 participants with the introduction of a Langston Hughes poem- “Dreams”. 

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

I’ve always enjoyed this poem and have come back to it several times in my life because it reminds me that we have to hold on to our dreams through all the starts and stops of life.  When we began the Creative Process of the first morning, I introduced the group to Creative Visualization of calming the mind in order to access those dreams and bring them to the surface. Then I introduced the process of making a Vision Board.  A Vision Board is typcially a poster board on which a person finds and tears images from magazines and places each of these images on the board into a personal collage representing their life’s goals.   The process for both the mentors and the young people was extraordinary. While they were working it was so quiet/relaxing that it look like a wonderful family banquet with filled with amazing images.  The group quickly surpassed the original directive by placing the images beyond the borders of the poster board and also cut the edges into many decorative forms.  The group talked about how the process was relaxing and how they enjoyed having images that represented what they wanted in their lives.
The following Saturday,  I started the Creative Process by making Dream Journals to place their writings developed with Jane Ellen Ibur during the program. The Dream Journals were these transformations from cold, plain, concrete pieces of paper into colorful expressions to capture the words of inspiration and the road map of their journey of dreams.  The groups were so engrossed in the process that time seemed to go by in a millisecond.  The group commented on enjoying the process and how surprised they were in creating these books something most had not done since they were kids or, in some cases, not at all.  We now come together for the finale of the program as a community of dreamers to celebrate this extraordinary journey we’ve been on for the last four weeks in our culminating activity at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts joined by our other teaching artist Chinyere E. Oteh.

by Jane Ellen Ibur, Teaching Artist

I was delighted to be invited to join this project with artist Chinyere Oteh.  We were a tag team, dealing daily with 60 kids beginning at age 5. Daunting.  We divided the groups each taking half for about an hour, then switching.  I was teaching two classrooms down the hall with two different age groups.  I literally ran back and forth between the two room.  The interns from Beyond Housing’s Pagedale Freedom School summer program were indispensable – I could have accomplished nothing without them.  The staff amazed me with techniques for order from clapping and chanting to hand signals.  Yes, we were exhausted, and I was validated that Chinyere was as whipped as I was at half my age.  It was a whirlwind, but we accomplished our goals.  Kids wrote in a process with seriousness and humor.  In the exercise, I used to be…but now, we wrote not just about dreams, but about metaphorical changes, such as, I used to be ice, now I’m water.  One boy’s writing, I used to be dough, now I’m a donut, was hilarious as he had to write a poem describing his process of changing.  Enthusiastically, kids read aloud in class, even the ones who were hesitant at first.  Writings were then transferred into hand-made books created with Chinyere, with support from The Pulitzer staff and interns Gina Martinez, Emily Augsburger, and Megan Johnson.

I attended the culminating event for Freedom School and was blown away by the evening.  Slides with music of the camp, dancing, singing, chanting, theater all about the Freedom Summer of 1964,  I was 14 at the time, with lots of painful memories about history surfacing.  The performance was amazing!  The 5 panels kids made with Chinyere were proudly and beautifully on display.  The room was packed with family.  I was very moved.

I stayed on at Freedom School beyond our The Pulitzer experience.  What I learned is that if I’d been brought in sooner, I would have been able to connect my writings to their theme.  Also,  like with most collaborations, Blueprint and Freedom School could have communicated more effectively, which I suggest is due to the enormity of what Freedom School was trying to accomplish, the social, artistic, political and historical understanding of a time period explored through art, music, dance, chants, etc., and its size. Projects often begin with huge goals that are scaled back.  I feel our program was successful; we wrote, created art, learned new aspects of creative process, connected with each other and had fun.  What sometimes may look like chaos is just creativity at work.  This process was a good dream.

I liked that we started each day with a couple interns talking about their life dreams and how they’re making them come true, such as graduating high school and attending college.  I liked that we ended each day with Sweet and Sour.  Thanks to The Pulitzer and Beyond Housing for including me in this project, and special thanks to Chinyere Oteh and my whole collaborating team from The Pulitzer and Freedom School.  A project where dreams came true.