See Where Learning Is Happening at the Academy for the Love of Learning's 2nd Annual Festival of Learning
This spring, the Academy for the Love of Learning's year of creativity and hard work throughout the city of Santa Fe will be thrown open to the public in a two week Festival of Learning with two main public events on April 22nd and May 7th.
SANTA FE, NM, March 10, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Each year, children, elders, educators, artists and members of the Santa Fe community come together for a one-of-a-kind event: The Academy for the Love of Learning’s Festival of Learning. The Second Annual Festival of Learning will illuminate the culmination of a year of creativity and hard work throughout the city with two main public events on April 22nd and May 7th highlighting where learning is happening in Santa Fe.
The events kick off with a FREE drop-in festival at the Santa Fe Railyard on Friday, April 22nd, 2016, with Inspire Santa Fe at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion and El Otro Lado at SITE Santa Fe, from 4:30-7:30 pm.
"I saw students who had a hard time with other parts of academics stand up on the stage in front of a crowd and share a part of themselves that I had never got to witness before."
Laura Mayo-Rodriguez, Teacher
At SITE Santa Fe, public school children, teachers and teaching artists will share work created together over a yearlong exploration of identity and place through the Academy for the Love of Learning’s El Otro Lado in the Schools program. Founded by community artist Chrissie Orr, with guidance and vision from Academy Founder Aaron Stern, El Otro Lado in the Schools offers in-depth, cross-cultural workshops throughout the school year in which participants access and express their individual stories through journaling, recorded oral narratives, photography, visual arts, music, dance and written expression. The impact of this program reaches new depths when the wider community witnesses and honors the work of our students, teachers and teaching artists.
Laura Mayo-Rodriquez, a teacher at Nava Elementary School expressed the power of learning another side of her students’ story: “I saw students who had a hard time with other parts of academics stand up on the stage in front of a crowd and share a part of themselves that I had never got to witness before.”
Simultaneously, across the street in the Farmers’ Market Pavilion, over 70 volunteer mentors and their young protégés (aged 9-19 years old) from Inspire Santa Fe will present performances and interactive displays that show what they have learned together this year. Facilitated in collaboration with the 40-year-old Community Development Corporation, Siete del Norte, and with major support from Monte del Sol Charter School, Mayor Javier Gonzales and the City of Santa Fe, Inspire Santa Fe pairs young people with adult mentors for weekly meetings in an area of deep interest for both mentor and protégé.
The Festival of Learning will conclude with I Saw the Mystery, a Lifesongs Concert at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on May 7th at 7pm. Lifesongs Concerts are the culmination of months of creative collaboration between elders, artists,
community members, youth and people in hospice. The performances celebrate the voices of our elders, the insights gained at end-of-life, and the extraordinary alchemy of intergenerational creative exchange. Standard tickets for the concert are $10 dollars. Premium tickets are $100, which goes to support the ongoing work of Lifesongs.
“Lifesongs is a cutting-edge intergenerational arts program that brings everyone into the folds of collective creative expression, regardless of age, ethnicity, language, economic status, physical mobility, and cognitive capacity. I am inspired by the special ways Lifesongs uses story-sharing, music, poetry, and other art forms to bring the experiences of people in nursing care and hospice out of isolation, and into the fullness of a robust creative community.” — Gary Glazner, Founder and Executive Director of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project
About the Academy for the Love of Learning
The Academy for the Love of Learning is taking the lid off learning, working outside the four walls of our schools to reconnect people, young and old, with their innate wonder and enthusiasm for discovering who we are in the deepest sense, who we are when we come together in relationship, and the impact of the structures and systems we live within.
The Academy for the Love of Learning awakens, enlivens, nurtures, and sustains the natural love of learning in people of all ages. To achieve our mission, the Academy has developed transformative curricula and methodologies – our learning field inquiry approach – offered through our integrated set of programs, conferences, organizational practices and research. The intent of our work is to help stimulate and support the rebirth and renewal of learning and education in America.
+Contact:
Jessica Smyser
Tel: (505) 995-1860
Email: jessicas@aloveoflearning.org
For more information about the Academy for the Love of Learning, visit: http://www.aloveoflearning.org