Belmont Runyon

Session 1

Our first meeting at Belmont Runyon was on October 19th.

We first met up with Mr. Hannah, the art teacher and then he quickly took us to meet the group of students who would be working with us, which included middle school student from 5th grade to 8th grade.

We introduced ourselves, the Barat Foundation, and what the Barat Foundation does, also Chandri Barat as its Executive Director and also Aldo Villarreal as the Artist in Residence and the Visual Communicator. Then we asked the students to introduce themselves by telling us their name and their grade and anything about themselves they would like to share with us all. We then showed them the Creation Nation website: www.creationnation.org, where we introduced the students to Animodules and showed them videos of the annual Creation Nation Art & Peace Parade.

We continued on with a word derivation exercise. We asked the students to define the word Creation. They gave answers such as “showing imagination,” “to make something,” “creativity.” Next we asked them to define Nation, which with they replied with “a group,” “a country,” “to make one,” “culture,” “shared values.” And finally we asked them to define Creation Nation. They defined Creation Nation as ” Unity where you can share your thoughts,” “Expression of creativity,” and ” a group of people that express themselves through art.”

With the completion of this word derivation exercise, they were now inducted into our Creation Nation.

To conclude our first session, we asked them as homework, to start thinking about ideas, images, colors, anything visual that represents themselves, their school, community and culture that they would like to include in the design of their Animodule.