Word Up Word Out: Amplifying the Conversation ~ Lisa Anne Auerbach ~ Fall 2006 ~
We have all heard the one about the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it, a tragedy of wasted expression that will not be repeated within the dome. In WUWO, the class will work together to create a Sundown Schoolhouse newspaper featuring interviews and profiles of SS students and faculty, as well as those whose lives touch ours in so many ways -- friends, neighbors, and people we’d like to know better. What can this process do to expand our networks? What can we learn about others through interviews? How do newspapers create community through dispersing information and how can we best take advantage of this format? As documenters, our words have the power to propel this semester of Sundown Schoolhouse into the future and all over the world. How best can we harness this energy and script our own history?
Over the course of the semester, we create our collaborative newspaper, an issue of The LAA Times. Students will interview each other, faculty, and those they have met along the way. Each will be responsible for taping/transcribing 3-4 interviews, 2000 words or less; assisting with copy-editing; writing and imagining; layout and design. We will end the semester by distributing the newspaper, on a bicycle paper route.
The newspaper will primarily consist of interviews, though will be a page or two (or three) set aside for manifestos, recipes, yoga, gardening tips, and other topics explored at the Schoolhouse.
I am excited to start my own newspaper, The LAA Times, and I have imagined it to have several incarnations, in different cities, produced by different people, piquing the curiosities and indulging the imaginations of many! The Schoolhouse is a perfect and fun place to begin the project and investigate further ideas about how such a newspaper can function in a broader context, create community, and chronicle events and situations.
09.19.06 / First day of school! / 2-3pm
Introduction to the project, introduction to one another, introduction to me, begin the conversation. I will present past projects and speak about goals and ideas for the newspaper. We begin brainstorming and over the next month begin collecting and formulating content. We will maintain contact during that time electronically, so that we are not again strangers when we meet next.
10.24.06 / 4:30 -7:00 pm
Further in-person discussion. Students bring in interviews from press/internet/books that they think are outstanding. Discussion of different strategies strategies employed in getting to know more about someone through words, obituaries, profiles, standardized questions, etc. We brainstorm about The LAA Times specifically... Who do we want to talk to and why? Who do we want to know more about? What does knowing other people mean in the context of building communities? Is it possible to interest people beyond the dome in what happens here? How do we bring people in, make them become part of our circle, make them care, make them want to know more, incite action?
We interview one another for the publication, either in class or outside, or in the garden, either one on one or as a group... we decide this together. we also decide and assign other areas of the paper, crossword puzzle, garden tips, etc.
Assignments: Go out and get to know someone better! Bring back interviews! Bring back content!
11.21.06 / 2:00 -4:30 pm
Distribution. How do we distribute outside the dome? Bicycle delivery? Outfits? Bags? Mail? In person? Who is our audience? Local, national, global? What are the differences between paper and electronic versions of the same publication? How can a newspaper affect public opinion, relationships with neighbors? We are publishing this newspaper from a house within a neighborhood; what does local mean?
On this day, we go through the interviews turned in, read them over in class and decide on final content for the publication.
11.28.06 / 2:00 -4:30 pm
Layout/ editing: In class, we do as much as possible to prepare the layout, perfect distribution methods, etc. We need to get everything as close to finished as we can in order to have it printed for December 10 Schoolhouse Salon.