The Quick Lit sessions at The Gadsden Art Center were quite interesting. The September session boasted the highest attendance with 5 parents and 5 youth ranging in ages from 4 to 13. This was certainly a blessing since we were dealing with abstract art and attempts at replicating famous pieces. Such as the ones below in the viewer below.
This session yielded the most artifacts as the movie shows. August and October sessions (November's was canceled due to time changes)were attended by one child/parent combination. The first one was attended by the Connolly's who are frequent visitors and members of the art center. Of course we expected a few more participants since we delivered copies of the flyers to each middle and high school in the county, including a number of charter and private schools, and posted flyers at the area's four libraries and placed announcements in the local newspaper. As it worked out, the Connolly's are members of the county's growing population of "homeschoolers" and her husband teaches martial arts classes in the county. She was able to spread the word and thus more people participated in September. We decided to also focus on printing enough flyers for one school to target a specific population to see if that would yield better results. However, even after ensuring that each child had a flyer placed in their binder at the end of the day, the September attendees were not from the targeted school.
We realized that in September and October in Gadsden County, even though not everyone attends home or away Nole/Rattler football games, there are seldom any 'good' Saturdays to host an event. In the case of October, Henson and his grandmother and I were present and since he loves arts and craft he urged us to complete the assignments. We were able to complete the Florida inspired art projects but ran out of time to compose a song that reminded us as home using Stephanie Mills' song from The Wiz as the model to follow.
During the final session in December, the Connolly's requested another session in the spring since there is interest among the daughter's friends. This will be a good opportunity to see if spring provides a better schedule for hosting such events. I am aiming for February for somewhat personal reasons. There are a number of love poems and writings that mesh well with an activity I have in mind called Love Knots that should tie literature, art and music together rather nicely.
Overall, the fall Quick Lit sessions proved quite fun and we were able to meet new people and share the literature and art connection.
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