Category: Teaching Artists

Faculty Spotlight: Divya Rajan

Posted on Monday, October 24th, 2022 at 9:02 pm
Written by Arts Corps

Teaching Artist Divya stands in front of a plain background with side lighting. She wears a red top and gold earrings.

This month, Arts Corps wants to celebrate teaching artist, Divya Rajan, and everything she has been doing in and out of the classroom!

As the world re-emerges from the pandemic’s lockdown, our faculty have been busy at work not only creating spaces for our youth to express themselves in, but also creating their own art.

As an Arts Corps teaching artist, Divya is currently working with our programs Best Start for Kids, Out of School Time, and Creative Schools, engaging students of all ages in theatre and storytelling. As a performer herself, Divya has been working in multiple projects. 

We’re grateful to Divya for sharing more about what she does and how she does it!

 

You were involved in various storytelling partnerships these past few months. Tell us them! What did you do? 

It all started with FESTA this year – that was my first performance for the year, as well as one in a very long time. 

“Lost and Found” happened soon after. Organized by the Indian Embassy Spouses Collective, this was an exhibition of personal objects and the stories behind them. My audio story of a broken comb that I have been holding close for fifteen years now was one of the featured exhibits.

7×7 by Griot Girlz and Finding Trails by Penguin Productions gave me the opportunity to create and collaborate on devised, immersive and site-specific pieces.

With Pratidhwani’s Two Minutes of Your Time themed Coming Home, I came home to the stage, lights and a full-house of live audience. And, I also shot for my first commercial this year.

What made you decide to become a teaching artist?

Call it accidental or call it serendipity, but that is really how I became a teaching artist. I taught my first class as a teaching artist in 2011. I took it up because it felt like a fun thing to be a storyteller to visit schools and play games with kids. However, what I saw, experienced, learned, and received from kids impacted me forever.

I didn’t quite have access to art education as a child. Art was always that “extra-curricular” activity. It was exotic for people to call me creative and artistic; and yet life always boiled down to how much I scored in Math and Science. I also grew up being told that all those who pursue arts and humanities are those who are incapable of pursuing important faculties i.e. science or math.

I wanted to pursue architecture as a child. I wanted to design spaces. When a child is passionate about something, as adults we have the choice to create an environment for this passion to flourish or for this passion to be destroyed. I was that child whose passion couldn’t flourish in the environment that I was in.

From starting off as an accidental teaching artist, today I am a teaching artist by choice because I want to do my small bit to create an environment for children’s passions to flourish. Being a teaching artist is the opportunity life has given me to be that person I wish I had in my life while growing up.

How do you approach a new project or a piece that you are creating? Do you have certain processes you like to undergo?

Devising is my thing. To put it in simple words, I like to intuitively start with multiple creative exercises and allow for narratives to emerge. Once there is something I have hit upon, I start to deliberate and build a frame-work around it.

At a deeper level my process is a lot about confronting my identity, asking questions that matter of myself, embracing my vulnerability and seeking my truth. I weave this into the formal trainings I have had in theatre and what I end up creating is an integrated piece of performance art.

What is your favorite part about creating your art?

Surprises! Every time I create art, it is about confronting my uncertainties. It is chaotic. But, when the work is done, it is extremely rewarding. And, I find myself emerging a little more resilient than before.

What opportunities and challenges do you see ahead for those of us who care deeply about art, young people, and community?

Knowledge thrives when it has an application. The various reputations that art has earned over the years, in my opinion is due to the gap between the art-form and its application. Art has existed for as long as humanity has. So, it is important for us as humans to embrace the artists within ourselves. Bridging this gap between art for the sake of art; and understanding its deeper purpose and impact is a big opportunity as well as responsibility I see as an artist. 

However, although many have trodden down this path, it continues to remain an arduous task. It is going to take unlearning several generations worth of colonized perspectives, oppressive systems of power, regressive mindsets for us to get there. And, arts as a field continues to remain under-funded.

There is work to be done, and we must keep doing what we are doing.

Do you have any upcoming projects?

I am in conversation with people about potential collaborations. Hopefully, will have something brewing soon 😊

Thank you for sharing your artistry with us, Divya. We can’t wait to see what you do next!

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LIT: Why I Came Back as a Class Assistant

Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 at 8:22 pm
Written by Arts Corps

 

I come from a high school that specializes in helping students to become self-reliant and learn skills through the student’s interests. This is often done by having students search for internships or be an apprentice. When I was a freshman in October of 2018 I had a vague interest in game development and was short on opportunities. 

One day my advisor Steve announced a new opportunity being offered to Big Picture Students. He told us it was an arts program that taught audio, story writing, and virtual reality development. That last one felt like a wild card. I didn’t know much about virtual reality beyond a few brief appearances in online videos or tucked away in some corner of an arcade. No matter where I saw it, it always seemed out of reach like watching an owl perched on a tree. The fact that it was offered to youth out of all people in this high school made it feel like a one-time calling. But because of my lack of experience, I hesitated to raise my hand when Steve was handing out the tour sign-up sheets. I’m not sure what took me so long to finally raise my hand, but it would change my life forever.

Arts Corps is an arts education organization whose mission is to break educational boundaries and allow youth creative minds to use their art to influence the world through various programs. I joined the first LIT program in January of 2019. LIT specialized in teaching students how to use audio software, film equipment, and virtual reality tools to make their art with the help of specialized teaching artists. It was the first year of the program so some things fell a little off track sometimes, but overall it felt like an artist’s journey. It felt like the program was growing alongside you making it; it felt less like a training course and more like it was your program. 

Each session, we’d have morning check-ins, and even though we didn’t always have much to say it helped establish great community vibes. I loved when we went into the larger parts of Seattle on our trips to art studios. Even though meeting people who work in the careers you see yourself in the future is always a motivating feeling, traversing the streets and buses made it feel like the kind of stories you’d tell your grandkids when talking about your career. I don’t get to be on foot in the bigger parts of Seattle that often so that’s what probably amplified the experience for me.

The first major VR project I worked on when joining LIT was a simple exploration experience where you could move across dream-like worlds, which is my way of saying nothing made sense or followed a theme. It was mostly me trying to get my footing with the technology but it helped that VR is totally badass.

The greatest memory I have of the program was the final presentation of my first year. I wasn’t too confident in my weird VR project. It was also a way later time to present than I was used to so I was ready to go to sleep. To make matters worse we had a lot of trouble getting our showcase equipment set up like finding out who’s headset even belonged to someone. We cycled through students each presenting what we’ve been working on for the past six months. 

When my turn came I felt a strange calmness and pride flow in. Suddenly my project didn’t seem like a failure and I started to see with the smiles of the attendees that it was a success. Whereas once, I was some lonely kid in a computer lab, now was able to work on something most people don’t even know exists. It helped that the presentation room was literally a theater, the whole thing felt like a triumphant cinematic moment on film with lights shining on us. 

I’m one of those people that beats themselves up a lot, but I always seek to improve myself. This was the first time in my life I felt like I’d made it. It started off a long chain of future successes and I realized that I could be an artist if I tried. Since then I’ve only felt my progress of self-discovery moving further.

Arts Corps has helped me find what being an artist can mean and the joy it can bring to people. They helped me get my first taste of what it’d be like to pursue my passions professionally. And it’s given me hope that more and more youth have access to their resources so the world doesn’t miss out on the creations of a young person’s mind before their creativity is limited through adulthood struggles. 

I feel the least I can do is help out Arts Corps the best I can as a classroom assistant so that when I eventually become ready to join the games industry I will have helped make the Arts Corps better for youth than when I first joined LIT. So now I’m helping the LIT team with an upcoming week-long intensive. From April 12th – 16th we’ll be helping students from grades 10-12 learn about using immersive technology for storytelling and game development. Applications are due March 19, 2021. Apply here. 

— FABIAN HERNANDEZ-ANGEL, Classroom Assistant LIT 2021

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