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RESIDENCIES / COLLABORATIONS The Big Mash-Up (For community organizer trainings, conferences, retreats) This 5-day holistic workshop for adults includes singing, drumming, meditation, drawing, writing, art-making, quilting, basket making or chair bottoming, cooking, window box gardening, nutrition discussions, history, anthropology, language arts, story circles, yoga or Tai Chi dance, and theatre exercises. This is done with a team composed of wordsmiths, visual artist, dancer, culinary artist and Paula Larke as curator, discussion leader and director of final group presentation. (One week – 90 day collaborative residency with available artist practitioners) Cross-stitch: County Lines Produce original, company-written plays by members of the community! Children and adults of all ages learn choreography, write their own pieces and perform them. Participants use traditions from their ancestral and contemporary cultures and sub-cultures to create music, stories, dance and poetry. The local nature of this process usually brings capacity crowds to presentations of the production. Cast members learn to work with other races, other generations, other economic backgrounds to tell individual and family histories of the community. Community Elders Song Sharing
We facilitate and encourage sharing of songs in
neighborhood senior residences to stimulate conversation
and activity with tenants suffering from Alzheimer’s
and/or stroke-related disabilities. Songs revive memory,
give patients or residents a sense of grounding and
stability. (Among the noted benefits is increased
interaction between residents at mealtimes after song
leading. ) Sharing meals with them facilitates
conversation about common interests such as food,
grandchildren, childhood games, and memories from their
young adulthood. In establishments with
multicultural resident housing, music from each culture
represented is brought in and residents are encouraged
to record their suggestions for inclusion in future song
sharings.
PAULA
LARKE – CHILDREN’S SHORT PROGRAMS / SERIES / EVENTS
• creativity in those who are developing their writing, speaking, or other performing skills. They provide a bonding experience for those who are often at odds during conferences, in classrooms, workshops and/or discussion/planning groups. These programs aim to foster inter-cultural dialogue and acceptance of diversity.
Up the Miff Tree
MamaSays, DaddySays, GrandmaSays, GrandpaSays (Story or Spoken Word Circle) What are the values of different adults in your life? How do you follow or represent them? How does your life reflect their values? How does it reflect your own different, or evolving values? College students through elder adults
Unity in the Community
PAULA LARKE AND KIM NIMOY / Voices
in the Treetops WISDOM TREE (Story Circle – Intergenerational)
We lead the listener to circle up with
us, at the roots of our collective ancestral tree, planted
by the rivers of life that run to the sea. We witness a
wisdom seeker channel the COLLECTIVE wisdom of our
COLLECTIVE ancestral voices. The chorus of all our elders
and ancestors are asking ONE QUESTION – “What have you done
with your freedom?” and whispering a warning: “Keep your
eyes on the prize”. The Native drum challenges us - What IS
our true prize as American citizens? We are on a quest to
find unity in our new community.
CITIZENSHIPS I
The recording: A single voice calls us to together to listen. One city full of laid-off factory workers looks to its own to recover sustainability and whatever spirit of resiliency their ancestors had used to build and develop the town a century ago. Listening to the story is our engineer, P'Thi Htoo, a recent Christian refugee from Karen State in Burma who proudly shared the song he led other refugees in singing at his citizenship ceremony - "MY Country 'tis of Thee". We asked him to sing that song on this track - to ADD to the Spruce Pine story of American ingenuity and resilience – to celebrate his own masteries like English and professional music recording. He pleads, “Let freedom ring". Chief Percussionist, Kim Nimoy, then celebrates her Chinese mother's ancestors’ struggle to make it to America, after fleeing Communist China, by ringing THEIR freedom bell !
NEW BUILDING I (Story and Percussion Circle)
Conversation: The functions of democratic principles -
demonstrated by the Iroquois Confederacy - applied to our
documents of democracy.
Simple rhythm exchange and
blending workshop - participants take turns sharing rhythms
from their home culture or of their own invention. MORE THAN A BEAUTY MARK (Stories and Conversation Circle)
Vanity is disposable. Heart heals. Heart is forever. WE can help heal each other with our
goodness, our mercy, our compassion. "I'm music from a wind
that whistles sweetly 'cause the spirit of goodness tuned
it". A “Stories and Conversation”. FIELD AND HOUSE (Stories, Song and Conversation Research Circle) An “I Wonder If” meditation on class, culture, morality, and the attributes of true holistic intelligence : “If W.E.B. and BOOKER T had started a university, they’d have graduated a “talented tenth” (W.E.B.) that could “cast down their buckets” (BOOKER T.) wherever they went!
A pause to
ponder: does a contradiction between “field” consciousness
and “house” consciousness exist? What blurs the lines
between the two? What’s in the house that’s not in the
field, and vice versa?
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