Students from a variety of local schools performed scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. The event, produced by Write Out Loud and the San Diego Shakespeare Society, also included great applause!
I arrived in time to watch most of the performances and was impressed. I have no doubt many of the participants will go on to enjoy distinguished acting careers. Perhaps one day you’ll recognize some of these faces at the Old Globe or La Jolla Playhouse!
The performers represented Carlsbad High School, Mission Bay High School, Theater For Young Professionals, Bernardo Heights Middle School and Sparrow Academy. Selections from Shakespeare included As You Like It, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, and Julius Caesar.
At the conclusion of the event, William Shakespeare himself showed up to offer his congratulations!
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Check out this awesome art made by 5th grade students! It appears that some very creative kids attend San Diego Cooperative Charter School in Linda Vista! I noticed this display while visiting today’s 37th Annual Linda Vista Multi-Cultural Fair and Parade.
These colorful masks were actually made using cleverly wrapped balloons, instead of coconut shells, to simulate the fun, imaginative Mascaras de Coco faces that are popular in parts of Mexico.
I love the various personalities!
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
If you haven’t yet seen the Ocean Nomads mural in Barrio Logan, you’ll be surprised at the stunning beauty of this public artwork!
The three dimensional mosaic was created in 2013 by the Rainforest Art Project, with the help of young students from nearby Perkins Elementary School and Our Lady’s School. Hand-cut stained glass pieces glisten in sunlight, depicting a school of tuna swimming in the blue ocean off our coast.
The Rainforest Art Project, based in San Diego, works with schools in our region to create amazing works of art. Such as this!
Ocean Nomads can be found a few steps south of the outdoor fountain at Mercado del Barrio. Walk around a bit and you’ll find it!
If you want to see more great artwork by the Rainforest Art Project, check out their patriotic mosaic in La Mesa here. Or see the gorgeous art decorating their headquarters on National Avenue here. (In that old blog post I had labeled their building Farallon Design, which I believe might have been a previous occupant.)
It’s quite possible I’ve photographed more of their work around San Diego without realizing it!
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Do you know any kids who’d like to win 4 valuable passes to San Diego Comic-Con this year? Listen up!
I just learned there’s a contest underway that ends tomorrow, put on by the Comic-Con Museum and Feeding San Diego. It’s called the Hunger Action Hero Art Contest.
Students from K to 12 are invited to create a hunger fighting superhero! Artwork and a brief superhero origin story are required to enter the contest, but kids must do so by April 22, 2022–that’s tomorrow! Fortunately, submissions can be made easily online.
Various prizes will be awarded for the top ten entries, in addition to 4 Comic-Con passes for the contest winner. To learn more, click here!
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
In Chula Vista, the dastardly supervillain Darkula has been defeated, thanks to the superhero Power Avengers!
Don’t believe me? The exciting comic book story fills the walls of the Energy Station at the South Chula Vista Library!
When local sixth grade school students enter the Energy Station, with its action-packed walls, they might be inspired to become real life heroes. At the Energy Station makerspace they learn about energy conservation and sources of renewable energy, such as solar or wind power.
This unique City of Chula Vista project, created several years ago in partnership with San Diego Gas and Electric, aims to inspire the next generation to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics or STEM. Having a pipeline of future STEM workers is essential to the health and growth of our regional innovation economy, which depends on technical expertise in fields such as electrical engineering, biomedical research, and wireless communications…
No matter what a kid’s talents or interests might be, at the South Chula Vista Library they can learn how to create a brighter future and thwart the menace of Darkula . . . as members of the Power Avengers!
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Last Saturday I enjoyed a tour inside the new Design and Innovation Building at UC San Diego. The special tour, part of the San Diego Architectural Foundation’s annual Open House event, was one of many opportunities for the public to go “behind the scenes” at fascinating places around the city.
The Design and Innovation Building opened late last year. This great article describes the building as “A place where disruptive ideas come together to spark learning, technology, collaboration and new ventures.”
Inside the building it feels very spacious. Hallways are lined with large inside windows, allowing one to see activity in classrooms and labs and practically everywhere you turn. From the third floor you can look up through part of the ceiling to see the fourth floor. Even during the tour when the building was quiet, I had the feeling that I was moving freely through an incredible, connected, creative space.
The floors, from first to fourth, are called: The Basement, Maker Space, The Design Lab and the Entrepreneurship Center. Our student tour guide described how ideas proceed upward through the building, forming in The Basement, undergoing design and testing in the Maker Space, then rising to the Entrepreneurship Center where products can be brought to market. The Design Lab is where “faculty from the arts, humanities, engineering and the sciences join forces to solve complex issues related to education, health, mobility, communication and urban planning.”
The building will eventually include a good old restaurant on the first floor, but above all it was designed to inspire innovation.
I was excited to discover a museum-like room on the fourth floor of the building, with a gallery full of inventions! The exhibit is titled Patent Models: A Celebration of American Invention. It was so cool, I think I’ll post a separate blog concerning it!
Now, to give you a taste of what our tour group saw, on with the photos…
Looking into a classroom on the first floor of the Design and Innovation Building.Bits of stimulating art on the first floor.Looking down from the second floor.A room where there are seminars open to the public. At the conclusion of the building tour, our group heard a talk here about the selection of San Diego-Tijuana as 2024 World Design Capital.We walk out onto the second floor terrace, with great views across UCSD, including the nearby trolley station.Walking through the Maker Space on the second floor.Display includes rapid prototyping.I took this quick pic as we moved along.Windows into the future.A metalworking shop, if I recall correctly.Tables where people with unique ideas can freely interact.Gazing up from the third to the fourth floor.One fascinating room at the Design Lab: Speculative Ecology and Bioarchitecture.A room on the fourth floor where students can speak to entrepreneurs.Social Contract on a fourth floor wall. I am joining an inclusive, collaborative community of partners. Together we will extend and expand the innovation economy in San Diego…Nearby post-it dreams. Seeing beyond the horizon…Curating your knowledge and influence to create or envision something new…Solve problem in a new way…Opportunity and solutions with flare…
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Look at all the inspirational street art painted in Allied Gardens, just outside Stephen C. Foster Elementary School!
The artwork on several electrical boxes was painted by Mindful Murals, whose positive messages inspire and motivate students at a variety of schools around San Diego.
Colorfully written outside Foster Elementary are the words Creativity Is Contagious…Pass It On. To encourage learning, there are also images of a pencil, a palette, a book and a computer, a question mark inside a light bulb, and the mathematical symbol for pi.
As I walked through Allied Gardens this past weekend, I was excited and pleased to happen upon this great Mindful Murals art!
Three years ago I was given a cool tour of their motivational art at Edison Elementary School in City Heights. See those photos here!
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
A fascinating display in one window of the Unarius Academy of Science in El Cajon shows students engaging in psychodrama, reenacting past-life experiences.
I walked past the Unarius Academy of Science today. It’s located in downtown El Cajon. You might have seen their flying saucer car or the space murals by their parking lot.
According to an educational sign in the window, beginning in the late 1970’s, students were filmed during their elaborate psychodramas to help them recognize and overcome past-life shocks and traumas.
Comic books and graphic novels can be used in schools to stir excitement for reading, and to explore and teach a variety of subjects.
Today a panel of educators shared their thoughts about Words and Pictures Together. The hour-long panel was part of a Will Eisner Week event at the San Diego Comic-Con Museum.
Will Eisner was a pioneering cartoonist and writer whose work both inspired and influenced almost every comic artist that followed him. He practically invented the graphic novel. His amazing artwork is legendary. His stories are often complex, surprising, challenging and philosophical. Not unlike great literature.
The panelists at the Comic-Con Museum yesterday discussed how they have used Eisner’s work and other comics in the classroom.
As I sat in the audience listening, I learned there are many benefits to using certain comic books or graphic novels as educational tools.
Perhaps most importantly, they are accessible to young people. Particularly kids who struggle with reading. Those who resist reading or have limited language skills will often turn the pages of a comic, greedily devouring both words and pictures. After all, most comic books and graphic novels are written to engage and excite.
Another benefit can be the development of critical thinking. There are plots to analyze and characters to understand. Allusions and themes can provide subject matter for discussion. Stories that involve historical events or contemporary issues can open a young mind to interesting ideas and questions.
And there is the graphic art itself. Why did the artist make certain choices? The page layout, typography, style, visual point of view . . .
What I found most inspiring was that students can be encouraged to make their own comic art. To tell their own stories. Express their own thoughts and feelings. When you’re a young person, secretly unsure of many things and trying to figure out life, personal expression can help you grow.
By producing their own comic or graphic novel, students also learn how to plan a creative project and execute it. And they write!
What’s more, the opportunity to show their finished art provides a sense of accomplishment!
The panelists mentioned a few works and web pages that you can use or peruse:
Years ago I described how high school students in San Diego were creating their own graphic novel. Their amazing Jasper and the Spirit Skies was launched last year at Comic-Con@Home! You can revisit that past blog post here.
There’s another reason why I found this panel of educators so interesting. Classrooms around the world are reading my short story One Thousand Likes. This small work of fiction (no pictures!) concerns the use of social media and human isolation. Read the story here.
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera (and write)! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
On the south side of National City’s Kimball Park, near 16th Street, a footbridge crosses Paradise Creek. Look up near the bridge and you’ll spy beautiful small sculptures mounted atop high posts.
These shining metal sculptures at the Paradise Creek Gathering Place were created by San Diego artist Vicki Leon, in collaboration with high school students at A Reason To Survive (ARTS), an organization in National City that uplifts local youth using the power of creativity.
The Paradise Creek Gathering Place sculptures together are titled Migratory Flight. They resemble silvery birds taking wing. Solar-powered lights illuminate bits of colored glass in clear tubes beneath each sculpture.
The environmental sculptures, symbolizing wildlife that depends on Paradise Creek, were installed in 2018. Many in the community came out to help build and beautify the Paradise Creek Gathering Place, including the Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center’s Kitchenistas and students from San Diego City College and San Diego State University. You can read more about the project here and here.
Lead artist Vicki Leon has also helped to beautify her own City Heights Azalea Park neighborhood. You can see photos of more amazing public artwork that I took during a special visit to Azalea Park here and here and here.
…
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Cool San Diego Sights! 