Summer Workshops 2024
Thank you to all who joined us in June for our free, in-person visual and performing arts integration workshops at locations around the state. What an inspiring and creative week of making art and learning together! Special thanks to the following locations for hosting us:
University of Southern Maine, Gorham
Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA), Rockland
University of Maine, Orono
Monson Arts, Monson
If you attended, please complete our Summer Workshop Survey.
Scroll down for workshop information for each location.
*This day of workshops includes a special 1-hour Lunch & Learn session for all attendees with Cross Cultural Community Services (CCCS).
Workshop 1
Environmental Stewardship & Creating Wearable Art: Zostera Marina’s Mad Hatter Gala Beneath the Sea!
Come learn the history and art of hat making with teaching artist Posey Moulton, who among other things, apprenticed with a French artist famous for her wearable art. Posey will be bringing her signature recycled materials, nets, ropes, textiles, and beads, as well as shells, lace, sisal, felt, and wires to make gala-worthy hats inspired by Zostera, Maine’s rapidly declining eelgrass. Join her to learn how to weave any content into art making as you create your own wearable art piece for an imaginary ball beneath the sea for Marina, an environmental superhero!
Workshop Leader: Pamela Moulton (aka: Posey!), Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 2
Painted Patterns and the Double Accordion
This workshop will explore the rich visual and sculptural possibilities of double accordion book forms. By introducing color, contrast, cutouts, and flags, each book will come alive in three dimensions. Participants will paint abstract patterned paper and incorporate it into a double accordion “tunnel” book, finished with a simple hard cover that can be used with any content area. Together we will explore two of workshop leader Jill’s favorite things – the incredibly fun double accordion book structure and making abstracted painted patterns.
Workshop Leader: Jill Osgood, Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 3:
From 2D to 3D: Painted Paper Sculptures
Participants will explore various techniques to create dynamic painted papers. Using a wide range of paper materials, you will learn to transform them into a variety of sculptural objects. Participants are invited to connect this work to their classroom content such as life science, math, or literacy.
Workshop Leader: Cat LaBarre, Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 1
Environmental Stewardship & Creating Wearable Art: Zostera Marina’s Mad Hatter Gala Beneath the Sea!
Come learn the history and art of hat making with teaching artist Posey Moulton, who among other things, apprenticed with a French artist famous for her wearable art. Posey will be bringing her signature recycled materials, nets, ropes, textiles, and beads, as well as shells, lace, sisal, felt, and wires to make gala-worthy hats inspired by Zostera, Maine’s rapidly declining eelgrass. Join her to learn how to weave any content into art making as you create your own wearable art piece for an imaginary ball beneath the sea for Marina, an environmental superhero!
Workshop Leader: Pamela Moulton (aka: Posey!), Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 2
MOVING WORDS: Making theater/Making poems
In this action-packed workshop, participants will create new collaborative performance pieces and poetry. We’ll use elements such as collage and music to move us back and forth between creating theater and poetry: text will launch us into action, and action will lead us into new writing experiments. This fun, hands-on, generative workshop is designed for all and is applicable to all kinds of teaching.
Workshop Leaders:
Gretchen Berg, Side x Side teaching artist
Dawn Potter, author or editor of nine books of prose and poetry, most recently the poetry collection “Accidental Hymn.” She is the director of the Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts, leads the high school studio writing program at Monson Arts, has worked as a teaching artist in classrooms around New England, and now and again plays fiddle and sings.
Workshop 3
Curating and Creating Miniature Museums
Join Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s (CMCA) teaching artist Tara Morin for an exploration into the curatorial process through the creation, selection, and exhibition of miniature works of art. This workshop will focus on a collaborative, participant-made miniature museum project. Learn tips and tricks specific to the making, curating and displaying of miniature works in various classroom and community arts settings.
Workshop Leader: Tara Morin, a mixed media artist, miniaturist, and art educator. She has over 12 years of experience working with artists of all ages in a multitude of media and in a variety of settings. Her passion is helping support other makers in their journey to discover their unique creative path.
Workshop 1
Creating a Healthy Classroom through Improvisation
This instructive and fun workshop explores the art of play using visual arts, theatre games and activities, including improv as a teaching tool for SEL. Research shows that interactive play contributes to individual wellness and healthy classroom culture that teaches and supports inclusivity, good brain health, empathy, increased confidence, kindness, and lowered stress for everyone. In the morning you will learn games you can use with your students, and in the afternoon we’ll create stories using a literacy model you can easily adapt for your classroom.
Workshop Leader: Meg Christie, LCSW, Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 2
Paper Puppets and Bookmaking
Participants will discover how puppets can play an integral role in “hands-on” learning about any subject through storytelling. Creating and using puppets invites teachers and students to explore Social Emotional Learning skills through art making. We will also explore the magic of simple accordion style bookmaking to create interactive structures to use both with or without puppets. Some practical applications include: theaters, journals, autobiographies, literacy, and math.
Workshop Leader: Sarah Boyden, Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 3
Holding on to What Holds Us: Creativity, Place, and Belonging
In this workshop, participants will explore creative map-making and the deeper connections to sense of place and belonging that can follow. Molly will introduce creative techniques to counter the emerging ‘eco-anxiety’ that many young people feel. Join her in a day of self-reflection, orientation, art making, and experimentation, with a follow up discussion on integrating mapping and ‘belonging-based’ creativity into the classroom. Mediums will range from writing and drawing to watercolors and printmaking.
Workshop Leader: Molly Brown, Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 1
MOVING WORDS: Making theater/Making poems
In this action-packed workshop, participants will create new collaborative performance pieces and poetry. We’ll use elements such as collage and music to move us back and forth between creating theater and poetry: text will launch us into action, and action will lead us into new writing experiments. This fun, hands-on, generative workshop is designed for all and is applicable to all kinds of teaching.
Workshop Leaders:
Gretchen Berg, Side x Side teaching artist
Dawn Potter, author or editor of nine books of prose and poetry, most recently the poetry collection “Accidental Hymn.” She is the director of the Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts (taking place this year July 5–7), leads the high school studio writing program at Monson Arts, has worked as a teaching artist in classrooms around New England, and now and again plays fiddle and sings.
Workshop 2
Painted Patterns and the Double Accordion
This workshop will explore the rich visual and sculptural possibilities of double accordion book forms. By introducing color, contrast, cutouts, and flags, each book will come alive in three dimensions. Participants will paint abstract patterned paper and incorporate it into a double accordion “tunnel” book, finished with a simple hard cover that can be used with any content area. Together we will explore two of workshop leader Jill’s favorite things – the incredibly fun double accordion book structure and making abstracted painted patterns.
Workshop Leader: Jill Osgood, Side x Side teaching artist
Workshop 3
From 2D to 3D: Painted Paper Sculptures
Participants will explore various techniques to create dynamic painted papers. Using a wide range of paper materials, you will learn to transform them into a variety of sculptural objects. Participants are invited to connect this work to their classroom content such as life science, math, or literacy.
Workshop Leader: Cat LaBarre, Side x Side teaching artist
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