Postcard Project: CEPA
In one of CEPA's after school programs, Teaching Artists Amy Meza Luraschi and Curtis Erlinger have been working on an extraordinary postcard project with students from Tapestry High School. Amy and Cutis worked with the 9th grade Tapestry students last year on another project. This school year, Amy and Curtis thought, it would be nice if they could take it further and the project wasn't just about the students themselves, but how they could share that with other people and find out how other kids their age live as well.
"When we started this postcard project, it was around the time that the statistics of Buffalo being the second poorest city hit the news. It was the kid's idea to bring that issue into this project, to show how they feel about their city and that there is a lot of great things about this city besides the label that we get. They took that on. They wanted to prove to other people that in Buffalo, there's great people, great art, great architecture," Luraschi said.
Amy and Curtis soon found out that less than half of the kids they were working with had ever received a postcard, or a hand-written letter. Quite a comment on this age of text messaging, myspace, youtube and of the me/I centric environment that kids often find themselves in.
The students began to see how a hand-written note, a personal vision of one's city, one's life, gives another person a real sense of who is sending that message. Much of the writing is quite incredible. And the postcard images are sophisticated little works of art.
The post cards that the students created have been sent to a school in Chicago, where those students will respond by creating and sending their post cards back to CEPA and the Tapestry students. From there, the Chicago students will send the CEPA student's post cards on to a school in California; they will respond, and things will go from there.
"This will take some time, but it is a great project," Luraschi said.
To view the artwork and messages that the students have created, go to http://www.cepaeducation.blogspot.com
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completelyoverplayed
Not about career opportunities for young people.
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Hoss
It transcends well beyond that.
It will have an impact far greater than any taxpayer funded call center or ethanol plant could possibly have on our region.
Fantastic project.
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