Press Release:Tulane Helps Students Launch Social Aid and Pleasure Club Project : NOLA Indymedia

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Shana Walton
Phone: 504.862.8027

Tulane Helps Students Launch Social Aid and Pleasure Club Project

A group of New Orleans public school students begin an innovative program this month to link the rhythms of tradition with the patterns of writing.

The kick-off for the Young Louisiana Voices Collective: World of Rhythms, will begin at at 2 p.m. December 10 at Oretha Castle Haley Elementary School and features drumming by Luther Gray and Bamboula 2000. The event is free and open to the public.

Students enrolled in the project will document the New Orleans tradition of African American social aid and pleasure clubs as a launching pad for improving writing skills and overall school performance. The project is sponsored by the Deep South Humanities Center at Tulane University and the Louisiana Systemic Initiatives Program and is linked to the Center's "Lessons in Folklife and Technology for English Language Arts" (LiFT ELA) project, a wider effort to use community and folklife to improve school performance.

Cherice Harrison-Nelson, an educator at Haley Elementary and the site coordinator for LiFT ELA, said the children will maintain a journal for each stage of the documentation project and will be completing several writing assignments. "It makes the learning come alive for the children," Harrison-Nelson said. "They live it. It's real." She added that experiential learning is directly tied to improving school performance.

Harrison-Nelson said a large group of New Orleans artists and community members have signed on to work with the students, including Luther Gray of Bamboula 2000; visual artist Ronald Romanski; Ronald W. Lewis of the Big Nine Social Aid and Pleasure Club; and Herreast Harrison, artistic director of the Guardians of the Flame, a Mardi Gras Indian group. Markeith Tero of the Distinguished Gentlemen Social Aid and Pleasure Club will serve as choreographer for the children, and historian Sunday Emodiae will help the children explore the links between the New Orleans practices and West African parading and drumming traditions.

Each part of the project will have a learning and writing focus, Harrison-Nelson said. For instance, the children will wear suits made of fabric printed with West African symbols. "The children went online to find an Africa fabric company and printed out swatches and voted," Harrison-Nelson said.

The project will culminate in a spring parade produced by the children and a performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. "The audience will learn and come along on our journey with us," Harrison-Nelson said. "We will inform as we perform."

For more information, please contact the Deep South Humanities Center at 862.8027

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Shana Walton, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Deep South Regional Humanities Center
Suite 203 Uptown Square
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA 70118

phone: 504.862.8025
fax: 504.862.8026
email: swalton@tulane.edu

http://deepsouth.tulane.edu