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Sitka School District | Stop-Motion Animation Youth Cultural Camp 2022

Sitka School District
  • City: Sitka
  • Region: Southeast
  • State House District: 2 - Sitka
  • State Sentate District: A - Sitka
  • Grantee Type: School District
  • Grantee Discipline: Non-Arts/Non-Humanities
  • NEA Outcomes: Learning
  • Project Discipline: Multidisciplinary
  • Activity Type: Arts Instruction
  • Grant Award Amount: $10000
  • Project In-Kind Contribution: $0
  • Grant Year: 2022
  • Grant Gategory: Youth Cultural Heritage Project Grants
  • Fund Source 1: Private Foundation - Rasmuson Foundation
  • HAYC Goals: Arts and Cultural Education Integration
  • ASCA Goals: Enable all Alaskans to lead expressive lives
  • ASCA Objectives: Promote the importance and value of creativity for all.

Project Description

Through the Youth Cultural Heritage Project Grant, Sitka School District Youth worked with culture bearers on Lingít language. Students chose vocabulary terms and sentences they wished to learn, and adults researched the selections and offered coaching. Students learned how to use stop-motion animation and audio capture tools to collaboratively depict the vocabulary and phrases. Students hosted a short film fest to premiere their videos to their families.

Impact

The impact created by this YCH project enabled the Sitka Native Education Program to develop camps that wove modern day technology, stop-motion and podcasting, into traditional ways of living and knowledge. This experience created opportunities for students to learn about their cultural identities while also seeing how they could pursue creative outlets in the future, such as programming, graphic design, and podcasting. The impact of the YCH project in our organization has been seen throughout staffing, student knowledge, and overall social and emotional wellbeing. Students developed deeper understandings of their identity, their connection to place, and what it means to be a learner and practitioner of cultural knowledge.