The Creation Studio will be a place where students can work with their hands and connect to their hearts; where they can learn handicrafts like weaving and skills like; where they can connect to the earth through activities like pottery; where they can learn traditions passed down through time like basket weaving – and hear the stories that go along with those traditions. The Creation Studio will be a place where students can make connections between their own emerging story and the stories of the past handed down through ages through artistic expressions. The Creations will have work tables, shelves with art supplies, accessories such as a potter’s wheel, a kiln, a loom, and wood working tools etc. This studio will be the center for artistic expression in the sense of the Greek “techne” or “bringing forth”.
Special guests will be invited to present to the students, including representatives of indigenous peoples as well as artisans who carry creative traditions of American historical culture. Each year, these guest teachers will share with the students different artistic and craft techniques, explain the origins of those techniques and the meanings of those techniques for the people who originated them.