El Otro Lado: The Stories That Connect Us

El Otro Lado is using the creative process of the interdisciplinary arts to address issues of migration, human rights, boundaries and sense of place here in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The intergenerational cross cultural participants are actively involved in developing symbolic maps/cartograms, visual representations and audio recordings of their stories, their journeys, their landmarks, their boundaries and their sense of place and home.

An intensive series of workshops are underway with youth at Charter 37, with additional workshops for families, women, children and individual community members. The workshops are specifically designed to provide a safe space for all to be able to share and express delicate stories and topics in relation to migration, journey and human rights.

The workshops are inclusive, culturally sensitive and innovative and have been designed with the aid of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a local Santa Fe based advocacy group, Santa Fe Art Institute and Academy staff.

Each of the workshops introduces the participants to the theme and history of migration, contemporary issues of journey and sense of place, local and global, listening skills and understanding of the “other” through the use of the arts. The participants document their journey stories through the use of journaling, story-telling and recorded oral history, photography, visual arts and written expression.

The workshops are based on a series of questions:

• Where do you come from?

• Where is home?

• How do you define home?

• What does it look like?

• What are your landmarks?

• What are the differences between where you live now and where you come from?

• What does “border” mean to you?

• What would you add to the declaration of human/world rights?

• What does you community look like?

• Where do you place yourself in this community?

• What does the word “journey” mean to you?

An eight week summer intensive, one day a week, will offer a smaller group of students a more refined and deeper exploration of the skills taught during the school year in order to complete works for public display. The works will be exhibited in public locations around Santa Fe and installed on the city buses.

At the end of its journey, the final works will be installed at the Academy in commemoration of the opening of the Academy's new home. Once on the land there will be opportunities for visitors to the Academy to add their own stories to it.

Our intent is to share this process and provide support to other communities interested in initiating similar community based art projects in their own community.

El Otro Lado Project Team:

• Chrissie Orr, Santa Fe Art Institute Artist in Residence and Academy staff

Academy Staff

• Melissa Stevens-Briceño
• David Gordon

Santa Fe Art Institute »

• Johanna Kohout
• Ammo DeJesus Moleski
• Pablo Ancona
• Emily Stern

For further information, please contact: melissa[at]aloveoflearning.org

To learn more about the Academy join one of our Field Trips.

"Thank you for helping us in crossing borders that we would never have done without your guidance."

~ El Otro Lado participant

“We tell stories to cross the borders that separate us from one another”

~ Alison Deming

“Boundaries of home, what defines home is it where you were born, is it where you live, do you carry it with you….Why is it some people are prevented from going home or finding and establishing home. As with plants and animals are there particular qualities that we need to survive, an orchid has a hard time in the dry air of the desert; piñon and juniper only grow in certain areas. Do we humans need the same? Does it depend on our genetic makeup or what we encounter in those first breathes.”

~ Doug Aberly

“The power of art is to make us see again, to see what we have forgotten or what we do not want to remember, to open our eyes beyond our own horizons. It is the act and the process combined with the beauty of the work that stirs the imagination”

~ Chrissie Orr, Autumn 2007

 
“No journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within”

~ Lillian Smith