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I recently finished reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey, a book best described as reading a busy Renaissance painting set in space: beautiful, revelatory, and a little sad. The science fiction and philosophical meditation follows several astronauts on the International Space Station as they circulate the planet at 17,000 miles an hour. It was a reminder of how so much of our humanity is anchored. Places, people, and perhaps solid gravity are essential to the stories we tell about ourselves. As Riverside has matured and relationships have deepened among our students and our place, my hope is our humanity grows too. Here’s what we got up to in January.
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Belated Holiday Celebration & Sustainability Practice
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We celebrated a belated holiday at Riverside in the first week of January. With graham crackers, icing, an overabundance of candy, students took their holiday spirit and knowledge of climate change to construct a Riverside in harmonious relationship with the environment. Oreo and gummy worm gardens represented the importance of local produce and plants as carbon sinks. Kit-Kat solar panels adorned the roof. And stick-figure people walked to the building to avoid CO2 emissions. As is required of all good parties, we made sure to sing, dance, and make lots of jokes. Of our guiding principles “care for self, care for others, and care for the environment,” it was great to dive into our third.
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Mississippi Museum of Art, Walter Anderson Museum of Art, and Slingshot
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With support from two exceptional art institutions in Mississippi, our students have been hard at work learning the principles of video design, editing, and narrative storytelling. The Walter Anderson Museum of Art provided us with $5,000 to participate in National Geographic’s “Slingshot” project where young people create one-minute videos to detail their solutions to climate change. bech evans, a brilliant videographer from the Mississippi Museum of Art, has worked closely with our students to teach them what makes a video captivating and how to capture authentic footage from their own lives to tell the stories they want to tell. Stay tuned for some cinematic masterpieces.
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As the days pass, new colors adorn our formerly blank building sides. Our students and our artist partner, Justin Ransburg, are in an effortless synchronicity. Most excitingly, we’ve gotten used to cars pulling over to share their approval of our artistry, neighbors asking us about when we’ll open, and an unsheathed flow of excitement. Good community projects are iterative. We’re excited to change, adjust, and evolve as the people see fit.
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Antonio and Jordan help assemble chairs
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In addition to the outside of our space, the inside continues to fill up too. A tremendous amount of gratitude to our friends for helping transport ice cream machines, dark brown chairs, coffee equipment, and furniture to the building. White water lines snake through the ceiling tops and an in-progress health permit (we’re trying, I promise) whisper signs of opening soon.
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So much of what we’re able to achieve comes from our community offering support– money, improv expertise, time, publicity, a car, an extra hand– you name it. If our work excites you, please get in touch! We’d love to work together.
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That’s all for now! As always, thank you for being a part of the journey.
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