Guest post by David Sandoval

This fall I am leading 3-hour art workshops for students at the Boys & Girls Club of the Silicon Valley, as a part of an Adobe Youth Voices grant. The theme of the workshops is “the future” – a great theme for a nerd like myself, who grew up on Ed Wood and cheesy 80s movies.

For the first phase of the project, students worked on a diorama project we are calling Brave New World. We purchased an assortment of supplies from RAFT and brought in a diorama artist, and let the students’ imaginations run wild. Great fun was had by all, and you can see the results of our work succeeded in capturing that campy sci-fi feeling I envisioned for the project.

I wanted to inspire the students to think about the future in terms of current trends in the environment, social issues, and technology, and how they will effect how the future is shaped. I really want the kids in the program to think about how they will be building the world with their decisions as ambassadors of the future. Every phase of the project will address these issues in some way.

In the next phase of our project, students will be able to choose any diorama from the previous workshop, and we’ll be filming a sequence in front of a green screen. The idea here is that students get to collaborate and cross-pollinate each other’s work by choosing someone else’s diorama to film their sequence – but each student also has the opportunity to create something they can own themselves and sign their name to at the end of the day.

My main goal with these workshops is to set up the framework that empowers students to think creatively while having fun. I don’t want to create a structure that pushes too hard for a specific end goal – I want students to have their own voice and experience their own artistic process, and as long as they have fun and learn something along the way, then I consider the project a success!

For more pictures from the workshop, check out our Flickr photo stream!

-David Sandoval