Images from Public Social University

Public Social University was a whole lot of fun and it was a great way to utilize the public library's free room. The students in the class clearly loved being facilitators and educators. Here are images of what some of the classes looked like:

Monday Nov. 24
The first class was organized by Gia. She brought in a friend who takes old shoes and gives them new life. She gave us a bunch of paint and some brushes to work with and we transformed the old shoes.

I was really into the shoe I painted, but I concentrated so hard on making it perfect that I ran out of time to paint the second shoe.




The next class was led by Lily with a participatory lecture style. Lily gave us helpful tips on how to be brave, and what she does when she needs the courage to do something.

She was talking about bravery in an everyday sense, not in a superhero kind of way. Each of us talked briefly about something we felt we needed more bravery for in our lives.


For the third class, Zach brought his newly finished, transportable printing press. It's modeled after the Gutenberg press.

Each person was given a couple foam plates that we could draw on and then we turned our drawings into prints. A bunch of younger kids showed up for this event and had a lot of fun.



For the final class on Nov. 24, Judith brought in a couple people who taught us some Capoeira Angola, which is martial arts disguised as a dance and practiced by slaves in Southern America.

This was a really great workout and we each learned how to do some offensive and defensive moves.

After this we also learned how to play instruments that are made of everyday materials. These instruments are an important part of the dance.


Wed. Dec. 3
For the second installment of Public Social University, Eric started with a class about utopian and dystopian science fiction. He explained how the two terms are blurred in sci fi movies. His favorite dystopian/utopian sci fi movie is Gattaca.

Discussion followed about the relevance of these movies to our lives.


The second class was led by Tracé. She gaves us a great tutorial on how to properly sew your buttons back onto your clothes, how to mend hems, and how to make frays in your clothes go away.

Each person got to practice what Tracé was showing us with our own practice-materials.





For the third class Davis organized a hip hop session where the entire class participated in making a rap.

Each person wrote some lines and rapped them into the microphone. By the end of the class, we had a 3 minute song! The audio file is posted here.



For our final class, Ace led us through a presentation about morality within comic books and his fascination with superhero comics.

He showed us the comic where Spider Man dies as well as the first Watchmen comic.