Girls Incorporated of Alameda County

GIRLS INC.

"Girls Inc. of Alameda County is a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. We are a local affiliate of the national Girls Inc. organization, which provides vital educational programs to millions of American girls, particularly those in high-risk, underserved areas."

I am a part of Girls Inc., an afterschool program in Futures and Community United elementary schools located in East Oakland. My job title is a teaching artist in which I teach art and literacy in the GIRLStart Literacy Program. GIRLStart is a program for kindergarten through third grade girls that have a below reading grade level.

My goal is to help build and strengthen the girls' literacy skills through the creative process. I hope to engage my students by creating a lesson that involves craft and literacy tools. There is no doubt that I will learn as much from them then they will from me.

GIRLS INC. is respected program because it serves the needs of the youth by providing outside activities, parent and student counseling, homework help, and clubs (such as the dance, cooking, gardeing, and art history club). I am also running my own club called the "Craft Club" in which the students and I get together to do an activity twice a month on 'club fridays.'

Overall, I enjoy working in the GIRLStart Literacy Program and look forward to enhance my teaching practice and communication skills among students. I value the education of today's youth; I wish to inspire these girls to follow their dreams and build future careers.

-CSF Parina Daraphet

Shot down

Teaching has been difficult these days, with numerous gun related incidents, and one known fatality. It's hard to watch school administration completely ignore grieving children and communities. It's even harder to watch children go missing as they are expelled, hurt, scared to show up or pulled out because of extra curricular violence...

Other than recent fiascoes, the girls are doing fabulous. Simultaneously composing dynamic Super Hero paintings and designing/creating outfits for the upcoming ArtEsteem Exhibit.

You are all invited! SAVE THE DATE: Saturday, May 16th from 3-6 in the Oliver Art Gallery on the Oakland CCA Campus. All of the art is for show, most of it is for sale. There is a raffle, craft table, cultural arts performance, fashion show (my girls!!) and food! Come learn about ArtEsteem and the long standing AHC - CCA partnership. I think this partnership has truly added to my in-the-field learning experiences. Because these two communities are so well acquainted, I feel I have a lot of support for my formal work, and when I need a little therapy during the tough times. Also, I have realized that my partnership with my co-teacher is slowly dwindling. Sometimes, she just doesn't get it. She wears me out and makes me tired. She is hardly any kind of influential support for these girls, and very tough to work with.

hey

hey you guys sorry I havent posted in a while...things have just been really crazy. None the less working at mocha has been working really well for me. Working with the kids is great there really starting to warm up to me, hopefully things go well for the rest of the semester.

Working with constraint

The past few weeks at the museum have been focused on creating a visual language around the Legacy Oral History program. The program has been functioning under the umbrella of the museum without an identity of its own for the past 15 years. With this in mind the challenge was to create an identity that gave the program of voice of its own without separating it from the larger community of the Museum of Performance and Design. Legacy has used a variety of logos and designs over the years, none of which particularly exuded what Basya (my site supervisor) envisioned the program to stand for. I reviewed past posters and marketing materials for the program, tracing the visual presence, or lack there of, in order to get a sense of what had been done before and how it had been used. Through my research it became clear the main goals and characteristics of the program revolve around creating a community of conversation in order to preserve the histories of communities. From there I began a series of design explorations using text in order to reconstruct a visual sense of this conversation (pictured below).



Another challenge for this project has been keeping my site supervisor focused on the larger picture of what this design work will do in the long run. As a designer, it's uncommon for a client to be this close to the design process and it has been hard to proceed with the work while simultaneously explaining every step, especially the experimental steps, and how it relates to the finished product. When the client is this close to the process it is almost imperative that I work with the client to help them develop a sense of faith in the process. Otherwise, they have a hard time understanding what I'm doing at the micro level and how it relates to the bigger picture. This challenge is something I've seen other CSF's talk about. Trying to communicate the value of what you're doing to those who are not familiar with a process, whether its art or design, can be challenging and sometimes discouraging. However, I believe the more we are forced to defend the value of what we do the more power we will have to make valuable contributions to the community.

After completing a series of type studies I began to apply them to the materials being produced. This was the really fun part and helped the client see how the experimental work was related to the final product. So often, there is a misconception that designers sit a their desk and a good (or bad) design magically appears with a few clicks of a mouse. So in terms of how these challenges have turned into opportunities, I personally feel it was a chance to contradict some of these misconceptions by allowing the client to really see the dirty, and sometimes weird, work that goes on in the design process.

Below is the final poster that was created from these type experiments. The next posting will go into more detail about the process of creating both this visual language and identity system for the Legacy Oral History Program.



- Melissa