I am hugely excited about our first ever Winter Field Trip Series! It started in a couple of ways. First, Casey (CJ Executive Factotum) steered me towards The Sketchbook Project. Conceived of by The Brooklyn Art House Co-op, the project is a call for sketchbooks from artists and individual around the world. It’s an international creative effort – thousands enter – and all sketchbooks are meticulously cataloged and become part of the permanent collection at The Brooklyn Art Library (after their world tour, that is).
When she told me about the project, we thought “wow!” we could definitely get girls together to collaborate on the sketchbooks and submit them as a group effort. With this in mind, we ordered four sketchbooks with appropriate themes: In Ten Minutes…; In Fifty Years…; The First Ever…; and Opposite day. I wonder what their variations on these themes will be?
For ten minutes or two hours, girls can come join us to create pages that will become part of a published art book. They can contribute to a creative effort that ties them their local community and international an international network of voices. They will also have a chance to visit and find their work in the larger collection of sketchbooks, before the books go on their world tour in April.
This event got our wheels turning. The December (create) and April (visit) dates for The Sketchbook Project could book-end a winter Field Trip Series, with different events for January, February and March. I had a quite a few criteria for this first line-up of trips: 1) they push the boundaries of what girls may have already tired; 2) offer a private, shared experience for girls to build community; 3) range in location, interest and cost; 4) give a snapshot of what Curious Jane is all about.
Then, in steps Melisa Coburn – freelance writer, ShinyBrite blogger, and mom to a CJ Junior girl, among many other talents. Having run an amazing fundraiser event – Touch-a-Truck – for her son’s school, she jumped right into sourcing and organizing the trips. She looked into everything from media labs and scratch-and-sniff wallpaper factories (art meets science?) to physical adventures and culinary explorations. She hand-picked each trip after careful deliberation and designed a series that captures everything we had hoped to share. In addition to creating art books, girls can take flight at the Trapeze School, grab and tool and build at Makeville professional woodworking studio, and whip up something tasty at The Brooklyn Kitchen.
Yes – living in NYC brings small spaces and long winters. I try to keep my girls busy. I try to stay on my toes and tap into the endless variety of resources a subway ride away. But, I do have weekends when I wish my girls could go out and about – try something really neat and new – while I ran errands, met a friend for brunch, shopped a bit, or just sat and read the paper. This was certainly in mind when we decided to organize the trips and add transportation. Even our shortest event, The Sketchbook Project, gives parents the chance to sip a drink downstairs at the gracious 61 Local while girls create in the upstairs event space.
I hope these trips can offer something fantastic for the girls and a few do-as-you-wish hours for the parents. However, I have to admit that in this case, I’m opting for the field trips! I absolutely can’t wait to see the girls swing from the trapeze (and give it a go myself) or learn to use a power drill or completely light up when they visit their own sketchbooks in a published collection. Cheers!
