Catalyzing Newport is hosting its next visiting catalyst Estevan Rael-Gálvez, PhD from the historic city of Santa Fe, NM December 12 – 16th. As a cultural anthropologist and storyteller, Estevan has developed a practice that uses the 5 human senses to explore place, feelings and memories. In Santa Fe, he used this practice as a way to engage greater community participation in the development of the city’s first Cultural Plan.
December 12th – 16th is declared “Newport Sensory Week” by Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez who will be visiting Newport as a part of Catalyzing Newport’s catalyst residency program. Leading up to and during his December residency, Estevan will be empowering Newport’s residents to collectively tell the story of their city through activating their senses.
On Monday, June 20th visiting catalyst Jake Dunagan, PhD, delivered his lecture The Future as Cognitive Prosthetic to a full house at Rosecliff Mansion. During the lecture, Jake asked the audience to craft haikus at two different intervals as a means to creatively express our thoughts about the future twenty-years from now– the first prompt focused on the personal, the second prompt focused on the community. Posted below are the haikus that were generated from audience participants.
Howard Newman is a Newport-based scholar and artist who represented the Historic Spring Leadership Committee at Catalyzing Newport’s launch of the Mayor’s Office, 2061 on Saturday, June 18, 2016. The committee raised the funds to purchase the site of the gas station for public enjoyment. Howard’s thoughtful remarks are posted below.
Providence-based poet Kate Schapira and artist Adeline Mitchell co-lead a workshop at FabNewport on Sunday, June 5th that combined reflective writing and terrarium making. Interwoven throughout the workshop were short expository writing exercises that asked the group to free style and reflect on what we want to honor and memorialize in the present for future generations. Prompts included asking participants what we may mourn the loss of in the future (due to life cycle, neglect, extinction, overuse, etc.) and how we keep things alive. Participants then went on a scavenger hunt to incorporate found or discarded items (in many cases trash/ litter) into their terrarium worlds that also included ants, seedlings, plants and other cherished objects. At the end of the workshop, the group convened to share out about their creations. This workshop will be repeated with students and teachers at Rogers High School later in the week, and it has already inspired one of its participants to start a new creative writing group focused solely on future scenarios! The terraria created during the workshops will be on display at the installation of the future Mayor’s Office, 2061 at the former Coffey’s gas station, 48 Touro St., Newport, RI. The public launch of the installation is Saturday, June 18th from 6-8pm. The installation will also be viewable to the public on Sunday, June 19th from 2-6pm. Come by to contribute your ideas to the future city of Newport!
MICROFUTURES: WRITING AND TERRARIUM MAKING
FREE COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS FOR ADULTS & KIDS
SUNDAY, JUNE 5, 2 – 4:30 P.M.
FabNewport, 1 York St., Newport, RI
RSVP: SueEllen Kroll at sue@rihumanities.org
Rhode Island poet Kate Schapira and artist Adeline Mitchell will lead a workshop in terrarium-making and reflective writing to construct a futurist vision of what Newport, Rhode Island– and the world– will look like in the year 2061. The intentional construction of constrained ecologies will serve as a chance for our community to collectively study and practice how we construct, nurture, shape or incubate the future in the present. “Artifacts” created in the workshop will be on display in a public pop-up installation in Newport, RI, June 16-23 and returned to participants after the exhibition closes. In the exhibition space, the terrariums will act as a biological library of forms chosen to preserve in this possible future, and the writing will serve as description, context, future relic and user’s guide.
