Photo © Chewy Lin.
There’s a need to translate all of our stories in to a form that the kids want to eat!
Solomon Enos
The symposium at the Majuro campus of the University of the South Pacific brought together many components of the Marshallese Arts Project.
Students from Majuro Cooperative School and Ejit Elementary School read their poetry and presented their artwork in front of the symposium audience:
www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk/creative-writing/
Shari Sabeti explained the process and the results of the project’s social science research, looking at patterns that emerged in the students’ poetry and challenges that arose in the poetry workshops:
www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk/research/
Solomon Enos led workshops for the students in storytelling with comics.
The world wants to hear your story.
After all this time, new weapons are launched again, new missiles are tested. Climate change. Two critical opponents. All of those things happened right here, in the Marshall Islands. The stories that you guys are gonna tell, the world needs to hear.
Solomon Enos
Michelle Keown and Shari Sabeti joined Solomon in introducing RMI elementary school teachers to methods for teaching comics and graphic novels, and engaging students creatively and intellectually with comic-making workshops. This involved the teachers testing out the workshop by drawing their own comics.
Some of the comics and graphic novels discussed were Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006), and Munro Te Whata’s ‘History Project’ (2016). Read ‘History Project’ here: https://www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk/comics/history-project/.
The MAP symposium at the Majuro campus of the University of the South Pacific. Photos © Chewy Lin.
A guide to teaching with comics was part of the teaching resource pack MAP distributed throughout the RMI, and will soon be available as a free download from this page.