Showcase Your Arts

Summer Workshops! You're Invited

You’re invited to our summer creative workshops at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center starting Saturday, July 8, 2023, and running weekly every Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. through Aug. 5, 2023. Participants will be inspired by traditional Indigenous storytelling arts as they create their own art in songwriting, poetry, and playwriting workshops. 

Previously in News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, we were excited to share that the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit is partnering to offer creative workshops with Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. This is via a Harvard University fellowship for sisters Isabella and Sophia Madrigal (Cahuilla-Chippewa) and Pre-Texts. Pre-Texts is an organization dedicated to improving literacy, public health, violence prevention, and more in marginalized communities by using literature or stories to create art — that is, texts.

The workshops

From the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit:

“One of our main goals in collaborating with the Pre-Texts Organization is to recover local arts, languages, and cultural practices (in partnership with the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center) for the purposes of decolonizing education. Therefore, we will be showcasing traditional stories through art …

“We’ll use traditional Cahuilla, Serrano, and Anishinaabe stories as the foundational texts to create art.”

A collaboration and mentorship with Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, helps ensure that these traditional stories are respectfully and appropriately shared to inspire creative arts.

 “Much like our past productions, Menil and Her Heart and Wildflower: Indigenous Spirit, used traditional Cahuilla and Anishinaabe stories as inspirations, so, too, will participants be encouraged to read, listen to, and reflect on these stories to create their own original pieces of art.”

Everyone is welcome.
The workshops are geared toward ages 16 and on up.

Details:

Five weekly in-person workshops (online option via select weeks)

Participants will meet for three hours each Saturday from July 8-Aug. 5, 2023, at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, 127 N. San Gorgonio Ave., Banning, to learn and discuss traditional stories, then create individual works of art. Snacks will be provided.

Virtual gallery

“Using the art our participants make (if they give consent) we will create a virtual gallery and booklet that documents the art that was inspired by each story, song, or other text. This documentation can then be shared as a resource for other groups to use and an example of how art-making builds and strengthens cultural connections.”

 Showcase!

After the workshops conclude, “In partnership with Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, we will be hosting an optional community showcase for participants who wish to celebrate their achievements in the workshop and share their art with the community.”

To sign up and learn more information:

PLEASE EMAIL ISABELLA MADRIGAL.
Follow the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit on Instagram: @indigenoustorytelling.

Price?
We’re keeping the program free to encourage community participation. However, your donations to Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, whether you’re at home or participating in this exciting program at the Center, are welcomed and deeply appreciated! Please help us continue to support creative, community-building, cultural programs.

And don’t forget to sign up for the Dragonfly Gala!

We invite the community to celebrate the 501c3 nonprofit Learning Center’s 20th anniversary of saving and sharing Native American cultures, languages, history, and music and other traditional arts at our Dragonfly Gala on Aug. 12, 2023, at Morongo Community Center, Morongo Reservation. Please join us in honoring our beloved leaders, Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), our president, and his wife, June, our vice president.

The late Kumeyaay Elder Jane Dumas wore an acorn necklace when Ernest Siva presented her with the Dragonfly Award in 2005 for her soaring achievements in saving and sharing her vast knowledge of uses of native plants.

Eat traditional cultural foods such as wewish (acorn) along with delicious pit BBQ beef and chicken. Enjoy traditional bird-singing, dancing, and other traditional music, our epic silent auction, lots of cultural displays, and more! We’ll have limited seating, so please make your reservation early,
TABLES: $1,000, $2,000, $3,000; SPONSORSHIPS ALSO AVAILABLE.
Individual tickets, $60. PLEASE RSVP HERE.

Thank you!

We’ve been sharing our online News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center newsletter every week now for three years! We deeply appreciate every “like,” every “click,” every “subscribe,” every “share,” and remind you that News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center and its archives are FREE. We love to hear from you. PLEASE EMAIL US. Thanks as always from Center leaders Ernest and June Siva and Editor Pat Murkland. June 15, 2023.