I finished the first of 6 weeks with the Seamaac summer camp. Phally and Luce have been my faithful comrades up against a wily group of 8-15 year olds who, if given the chance would be happy playing icebreaker games instead of talking about making movies… The set up is 20 or so kids Tues and Thurs for 90 minutes. We meet at a building at 5th and Washington. The curriculum as I had envisioned will not be so practical with this group because 1) we are not within walking distance to their neighborhoods and 2) it is difficult to develop continuity from week to week with such a wide range of skills and such a large group.

Tuesday we introduced the project, talked about what neighborhoods we are from, and started a mapping exercise so people could start to think about the details in their environment. Thursday, we did an activity with still images and associations, to get them thinking about how images represent ideas. That went pretty well. We then showed 2 PSAs about Philly issues and talked through the messages of each one and how images were used to convey the message.

I think we will likely end up breaking into 4 groups and working on themes within close boundaries to the site- one group may do a video about the camp, another about the street art behind the Asian Supermarket… we’ll see how far we can get. It’s a challenging beta test- but that’s the idea, right?

Tagged: Follow The Van!