Sumner Boys and Girls Club - showing at Roslindale Congregational Church - 25 Cummins Highway - ROS HOME

“In Sight: Every Picture Tells a Story” is multi-level community art project that begins in September 2010.  The focus of the project is community building through sharing and exploring the stories of the families in our program—the Sumner Boys and Girls Club; our shared space host --the Sumner Elementary School;  and our greater community of Roslindale and Boston.  Through pictures—drawn, photographed, painted, videotaped, written, dramatized—we are creating a visual and audio piece that documents who we are: where our families have been (exploring our history and genealogy, using computers/technology to visit where we have come from as immigrants), where we are: (where we live, work, learn, play, what do we eat, celebrate, honor), and where we are going (promotions to other schools, colleges/universities, careers, dreams).

The Sumner Boys and Girls Club is in partnership with the Roslindale Community Center, which houses an audio/video studio.  The Sumner BGCB staff and Berklee College of Music and MassArt interns will work together to shape the project in music (family songs from our cultures) and visual art.  Cooking our regional foods and celebrating our holidays will intertwine with the arts components and figure prominently in our food and nutrition curriculum.

The Sumner Boys and Girls Club families will be photographed as individuals and groups.  The photographs will be used as part of a mural collage that individual BGCB members and their families will paint at Sumner BGCB Family Art Night, and during BGCB art class time.  Family members will be invited to video themselves talking about their family’s history in America (research, theatre, and dramatization) and will share family pictures to include in the video.  The BGCB members will use these videos to create a written document that will be the text element of the project (literacy).  Members will create family trees for our community “forest” which we hope will be installed at the Roslindale Community Center as part of an ongoing project connecting all area families together.

In September and October, we will videotape our families at the Roslindale Farmer’s Market.  The focus of this first series of videos is “Food of our Families” with Sumner BGCB families telling a story about their culture’s foods.  In editing we will illustrate the similarities of cultural cuisines and highlight the differences that contribute to our unique place in our world.   These videos will be shown at the Roslindale Open Studios in November.

Volunteers with photography/video skills; writing and editing skills; music recording and editing; painting, and drawing are encouraged to participate.  We also will be looking for volunteers who can partner with individual members and families to encourage them to establish and sustain their participation.