Kids, Art, Parks, and Comix

This is my mobile story for Digital Storytelling made out of my own comix, paintings, photos, architectural models, blueprints, poster designs, youtube videos, and words, except as noted.

This story went through many changes. Feel free to skip this intro and scroll down to the picture where the story starts. Then come back up if you want and read this after.  

1. First, I made a version with sound by adding narration to a powerpoint and uploading it to scribd.com. When you download it and open in with powerpoint you can hear the sound. I performed this version live at the Brooklyn Book Festival 9/19. Good sound at the live event. Bad sound in the recording. 

2. Then I made a version with more detail on each of the parts of the story with lots of hyperlinks to background history. Boring. 

3. Then I made this final one, Kids, Art, Parks, and Comix

I went back over our textbooks, and our Digital Storytelling class guidelines for the mobile story. Since I was making this on a mobile device (an Android MotoG phone) and I also wanted it to read well on a computer monitor, I went back and forth to design it well on both. On Blogger I enabled the mobile view. 

I added hyperlinks to youtube videos I made and to websites and blogs about the people in the stories. 

I paid more attention to visual pacing. I kept the text below each image to mostly just one line, sometimes more. The Lambert text asks us to pay attention to “how a story is assembled with visuals such that each layer emphasizes complementary or contrasting meanings or feelings”. (p. 109, Lambert). So in both the mobile and monitor view I made sure that the text worked well for the pacing I wanted. The pacing for this Mobile Story is very different from the pacing for the live presentation). I also was careful to have the text work with both the image below and the image above, since sometimes in a mobile view you see both. 

Storytelling for the Twenty-First Century provided a personal and interesting overview of what storytelling is and can be (pages 9, 10, and 11, Alexander). The section about what the Center for Digital Storytelling considers a story was especially meaningful to me. "Instead of reproducing events or situations through art, perhaps stories are essentially about representing people." (p. 11, Alexander)

The ethical considerations were different for the live presentation and for this mobile story that I produced for this Digital Storytelling class. I checked back in with each of the people in the story to be sure that this way of telling their story is comfortable to them. (They had previously agreed to these stories being told in other forms). I also reviewed Ethics Statements my fellow classmates posted. I hope you enjoy the mobile story. 

Sources: 
The New Digital Storytelling, Bryan Alexander, Praeger, 2011
Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, Joe Lambert, Routledge, 2013
Kids, Art, Parks, and Comix

I’ve been making art and editing comix with WW3 since 1984. 


I met WW3 artists working with kids on the Lower East Side. 


We made art with kids at Charas and in Tompkins Square Park

A lot of my art then and now is about kids, nature, and parks

I design + build parks and gardens with kids in NYC

These parks and gardens are open to skateboarding, biking, art... 

Organic food gardens and places to be with nature

Where girls and boys can be free, in public

I work with artists and skateboarders who mentor the kids

This is Beatriz. She began working with me when she was 15. She dances, designs, paints, and builds. Photo by Danza Azteca. 

Here, Beatriz shows Xiroima, 13, how to use a hand saw. 

And Beatriz and Xiroima together led design sessions for adults and kids from all over the city. 

Beatriz works with girls & boys to grow strong and confident. 

She involves 3 generations of her family. Now in her thirties, Beatriz still works with me, Danza Azteca, and children.  

This story is about Kae (on the right) and Keith (on the left). 

When Keith was 18 he asked me to design posters and create skate events with him all over the city. 

We hold events all over, in Manhattan, Canarsie, Fort Greene..

With skateboarders, BMX bikers, kids, adults...

...with all kinds of themes. This CMA skate event is about the UN convention on the Rights of the Child. We built a pop-up skate park at Children's Museum of the Arts. Poster by Cat Rutgers. 

In this one skaters served food they grew on the rooftop park. 

Keith's + Kae's events are all about kids and art... 

...and skateboarding

Each event improves the place where it's held. 

Skate ramps and garden beds are built and left behind

so long after the event is over people can grow pumpkins

and strawberries and prepare this food in school kitchens

and serve it to children in the schools

We work with engineers and architects to create designs so each of these skate events can lead to these improvements. 

Before the event, architectural models in public draw people in

people design the event and improvements to the place

and skate ramps remain behind after the event 

Gardens remain after the event to grow food and fresh air

A skater garden girl in my comic strip in WW3, Fighting for Air fights air pollution and asthma with a dragon and a garden. 

Comic strips, skate deck graphics and art get donated from local artists and skate companies for Keith and Kae's events. 

and Keith and Kae work with the next generation of kids. 

This story is about Nando, June, and Margo. 

Nando wrote this story and I turned it into a comic for WW3

I met Nando when he was 13. He wanted to turn the lot next to his school into a baseball field. 

Now Nando at 35 is working with kids building parks and greenhouses with OpenRoad and BroSis. He often wears his baseball uniform to work because he heads out to play after. 

Nando is a mentor to Margo. Margo's drawing (left) is a future greenhouse for a participatory budgeting proposal, in Harlem. 

Margo and Nando are using a participatory design process I 
co-created with Nando and many other people

Together with an architect people move pieces representing public park areas until they create a beautiful design

The moveable pieces and the base map are both drawn to scale

So the design can be made into architectural blueprints

Kids make these blueprints into 3D digital drawings, using a free program, sketchup, easy and fun to learn, like a video game

3D digital models are turned into 3D paper models

And then turned into a real greenhouse in a real place, like this garden in Harlem. The girl in the furry black coat is my daughter, June. 

And then the story of building the real place becomes a story in a comic book. June in the lower left is designing the greenhouse, and drawing blueprints with friends. 

I'm turning it right now into a comic book cover. This is the color rough draft I'm sending to the co-editors of WW3

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