Leepertown benefits from Kennedy Center program
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| Media teaching artist Brandon Kramer presents certificates to Leepertown students Thursday, following the completion of a three-week program which brought the Kennedy Center to Bureau. "It was a really rewarding experience working with this group of kids," Kramer said. (BCR photo/Barb Kromphardt) |
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BUREAU — What do a spring gala hosted by Liza Minelli, actor Morgan Freeman and the Leepertown Grade School have in common?
They are an event held at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., a Kennedy Center’s honoree, and the most recent school to benefit from the Kennedy Center’s On Location: Spotlight On Your Community program.
The Kennedy Center’s big yellow bus rolled into Bureau in March and left three weeks later, having turned a group of third- through eighth-graders into interviewers, cameramen, grips and boom operators.
The program brought two media teaching artists to Leepertown for 13 days to teach the students how to produce a documentary telling the story of an arts organization in their community. In Leepertown’s case, that meant Dexter Brigham of Festival 56.
Teaching artist Brandon Kramer said the Kennedy Center looks for towns where their resources, curriculum and technology are really needed.
“What we’re showing them is not only how to work this technology — for some of them it’s for the first time — but we’re also showing them how to use the technology to engage with their community,” Kramer said. “I think what’s so important about understanding how to use video and teaching these kids is what they’ve discovered is a theater festival within their backyard, and they can take some pride in the arts in their community.”
Kramer said the project was a little easier at Leepertown because the students were already familiar with Brigham from his work at the school.
“The kids already had an ongoing relationship with Dexter, and it made our jobs really nice and easy,” he said.
The program was time-intensive, with two daily hours of class time, and then after-school time editing and interviewing Brigham in Princeton.
Lorraine Blackwell, the other teaching artist, said the students learn how to do everything,
from researching and interviewing their subject to creating a storyboard and working all the equipment.
“This has been an amazing group of kids, and it’s been an honor to be here,” she said.
Eighth-grader Nathan Burkman said he and most of his classmates had never even heard of the Kennedy Center when they first learned about this project. He was not expecting great things.
“Before this project started, I expected they were just going to show us how to do this, but I didn’t think they were actually going to let us get hands-on,” he said. “That actually made me learn something.”
Nathan ended up being the assistant director for the project, and his classmate, Brittney Erwin, was one of the interviewers.
“I feel this is a once in a million opportunity,” she said.
Brittney’s favorite days where when they made the video or came to Festival 56 to interview Brigham.
“It was more of the days that we got to be more hands-on and we got to interact with more of the equipment, and everyone got a chance to do something,” she said. “It was all pretty fun.”
The bus rolled out of town Thursday after showing the community just what the students had been working on, which included a rough-cut of the video, a public service announcement and a question and answer session, all created and filmed by the students.
Dad Patrick Mayers was impressed and said his son, Patrick, really enjoyed the whole process.
“He would talk about it every day when he’d come home,” Mayers said. “It was a good opportunity for him to learn different things about the theater and the production of movies.”
Patrick’s mother also enjoyed it.
“It was some way of bringing arts into the school,” Holly Mayers said.
Superintendent Amber Harper called the whole thing an “awesome, awesome experience.”
“I am more than satisfied, and it was more than I even hoped for,” she said. “I knew it would be good because it was the Kennedy Center, but this went way beyond my expectations.”
And the project isn’t finished. When the bus rolled out of town, it left behind about $5,000 worth of media equipment, including a computer, digital editing software, camera and sound recording equipment. The students need to add some footage from Festival 56 performances this summer, and then edit all the footage down to a five-minute video which will be posted on the Kennedy Center Web site.
And then?
“Don’t stop here,” Blackwell told the students. “There are great stories about Bureau and Princeton and Bureau County that need to be told.”
Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.
