Having hosted a successful workshop at the Sarah King Elementary Art’s Fair, openED SA contacted activity director Victor Zuniga of Sutton Oaks Apartments to see if he would be interested in doing some pilot workshops as part of his youth outreach program.
Victor was enthusiastic to have us come over and do some pilot workshops. Sutton Oaks Apartments is located of IH35 on the eastside of San Antonio. It is located in the Promise Zone, one of 5 zip codes identified in the U.S. by HUD, which are:
“Promise Zones are high poverty communities where the federal government partners with local leaders to increase economic activity, improve educational opportunities, leverage private investment, reduce violent crime, enhance public health and address other priorities identified by the community. The 22 urban, rural, and tribal Promise Zones were selected through three rounds of national competition, in which applicants demonstrated a consensus vision for their community and its residents, the capacity to carry it out, and a shared commitment to specific, measurable results.”
Working with Victor we were able to put together two pilot afternoon workshops using curriculum joey lopez and the cmc have been developing over the past 5 years. The first workshop was based off of the stop motion animation workshops that was piloted at Sarah King Elementary’s Art Fair. The second was an soldering workshops where the students learned how to solder electronics through the creation of battery powered LED art sculptures.
Here is a video highlighting our workshops over the past month:
After having hosted these two workshops, Victor Zuniga has pitched us on developing a full on program where we combine the workshops that we have developed with an equipment grant in an effort to bring about long term programing for the Sutton Oaks and general east-side community. We see this as a great opportunity and will be following up with Victor, as well as reporting back when we have made significant progress.
