Sou Sou! Saturdays: A Family-based art Education Program
Mark Your Calendars, Our NExt Sou Sou! Saturdays Event is in March!
Our Sou Sou! Saturdays family-based art education welcomed the holiday season that rolls in with the month of November by Harvesting Cultural Unity.
It is the time of year when we see homes, stores, and schools decorated with pumpkins, corn, and gourds against the backdrop of colorful leaves. It’s the time of year when children’s crafts boil down to creating paper cutouts of turkeys wearing pilgrim hats and buckled shoes. A time when children are told stories of colonists arriving on the Mayflower while being led to engage in “gobble-gobble” dances.
Not here.
Our November Sou Sou! Saturdays event honored this season by paying homage to our African and Indigenous traditions. It planted seeds of wisdom by sharing oral history through storytelling that focused on Afro-Caribbean heritage. It cultivated our community’s relationship with music and nature by honoring the gourd and its multifaceted use, not just as food or decoration, but as a musical instrument that has been used for centuries throughout the African Diaspora and Indigenous cultures of the Americas. And it encouraged growth through movement by uniting storytelling, percussion and community during a drum and dance workshop.
Workshops & Collaborators:
Planting Seeds of Wisdom: Oral Traditions with Malika Lee Whitney, Kevin Nathaniel, & Sharon Gordon
This storytelling workshop paid tribute to the Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley of Jamaica, fondly remembered as "Miss Lou." Her cultural gifts as a folklorist, storyteller, dramatist, poet, radio, TV host and social commentator offer an incredibly rich and lasting contribution to our Afro-Caribbean legacy. Miss Lou believed "that 'de pickney-dem learn de sinting dat belong to dem' (that the children learn about their heritage). The harvest time theme offered insightful connections relating to Afro-Caribbean foodways, gathering of community, traditions practiced to preserve land, planting, reaping, and remedies for sustenance. The program motivated and engaged active audience participation through call and response, music and movement.
Cultivating Rhythm: Shekere Making with Fatima Logan-Alston
This workshop was a guided experience in handcrafting a shekere, a percussion instrument common throughout West Africa and Latin America. The shekere is made from a hollowed gourd and covered with a bead-threaded skirt. The workshop provided a basic template for creating a shekere and offered the opportunity for improvisation. Participants tapped into their creativity and custom-decorated their own instrument.
Growin’, Groovin’ & Movin’ in Community: Drum & Dance with Kimani Fowlin & Okai Fleurimont
This workshop was an opportunity to connect, unite, and transform energy and relationships through the power of song, dance, and rhythm. We took a journey into the African Diaspora, exploring the history and power of the drum and dance as a form of communication, an act of resistance, and an outlet of joy. Together, participants created a village of powerful drumming and embodied gratitude.
Sou Sou! Saturdays Photo Gallery
Whether you joined us in person or would like to explore what you missed, we invite you to view the gallery of images from our most recent Sou Sou! Saturdays program, as well as some of our past Sou Sou! events.
Inspired by the financial resource-sharing traditions known throughout the African Diaspora by such names as "Colecta", "Box Hand", "San", "Partna", or "Sou-Sou", this family-based art and education program reinterprets Sou Sou as an exchange of cultural resources.
Did you know you have unlimited access to our virtual Sou Sou! Saturdays series? Visit our library of past programs to enjoy fun storytelling, dance and music workshops, and art making you can easily create while at home!
online Series