600 paper cups built a castle!

Radical Food Jam
3rd Friday May 2013
Storyboard Activity 

Cups and plates and other dishes are as important as the food we eat. So, for the Radical Food Jam, we decided to use paper cups to build a castle. I built the castle half way up and some of our young visitors continued to add towers on the corners.

Gate and window of the castle were made the way that they could easily open and close. Kids could go inside and play in the castle and they loved it. Some of them didn’t even want to come out! Check out some of the photos of the paper cup castle below.

More photos of the Radical Food Jam event are available here. 

Photography and Film Night

3rd Friday May 2013
Storyboard Activity 

For a Photography and Film Night, a storyboard seemed like a perfect activity. The idea came up in the brainstorm session with the community programs interns and staff. After this meeting, Haley and I decided to take over the storyboard activity and we came up with the following things to prep:

1- Two boards designed in the form of film roll, each holding six frames.

2- Old and new photos of downtown Santa Cruz and famous landmarks in Santa Cruz County for the location of the stories.

3- photos of a few historical figures from Santa Cruz (Rory Calhoun, Cora King Swain, Zasu Pitts, Axel Erlandson) along with a few cartoon characters to be used as the main characters in the stories (we thought it makes it fun to mix the real people with cartoon characters.)

4-Thought bubbles.

5-Some transition words to connect different scenes of the story.

The idea was to encourage small groups of visitors to use a number the prepared characters and locations and put together a story. After they finished putting their story together and left the station, we cleared the board for the next group of visitors. I used one of the boards to keep the samples on, so it would give the visitors some ideas about how this activity works.

By the end of the event, We had visitors of all ages participating in the storyboard activity. Of course, our young participants were so excited to play with their favorite cartoon characters like Miss Piggy and Wall-E.

Other visitors enjoyed the cowboy character of Rory Calhoun and the black and white photos of downtown Santa Cruz from the early 20^th century.

The life of Axel Erlandson and his Tree Circus inspired a group of teenagers to re-imagine Erlandson's life story.

And here is a love story created by a family of three: