FALL 2021 AFTERSCHOOL CLASSES

SEPTEMBER 2021 - NOVEMBER 2021

Media club

Wednesdays | 3pm-6pm | Ages 8-14+

What’s your story? Calling all young creatives looking to practice media-making!

This past semester we started a media club with the intention of tapping into self discovery, along with planning interviews with local, influential individuals. As a result, we dreamed up some thoughts on the kind of media content we would want to create. We gathered and created interview questions and practiced asking and answering with each other. We had the opportunity to meet with Jalal, a local, influential, and inspirational famer from Sweet Freedom Farm. Our experience at the farm allowed us to put all we were learning to the test, including our interviewing skills and our camera skills (through collecting B-Roll), and how to point and shoot an interview. 

This field trip also helped open our perspective on who gets access to fresh foods, and how the intentional type of food being grown at the farm has a relation to our own cultures. In fact, one of our students was able to elaborate on similarities the food had to plants grown in her native country! 

By the end of the semester we shifted our focus toward story telling. We took a fairytale and put a modern spin on it. The kids used the modern story of Cinderella and tackled a 5 scene challenge. In this process they decided to work together to create a story then practiced the story through acting creating beat changes and set details that helped make the story come alive. Overall the media club has been a place to process our own experiences and create stories based on our interests. 

SOCIAL JUSTICE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

Fridays | September - November 2021 | Ages 13+

Transformative youth organizing, arts, and healing to build a more just world. With Sharece Johnson and Jalal Sabur.

This fall’s focus was on collective liberation and self liberation - these two interconnected focuses were at the core of the SJLA fall season. We started with collective liberation because we have been deeply impacted by our individualistic society and the ways it has eroded our social connections. We have seen the way the pandemic has again laid bare the social inequalities of these times and while folks were hoarding resources and people were experiencing medical racism, we also saw major uprisings and mutual aid efforts. The youth have been inspired to learn more about gentrification and housing justice, racism at school, and mental health. 

We started SJLA thinking about what collective liberation means. We looked at the work of Movement Generation (a radical ecosocial movement), and played theatre games to explore topics like: What does home mean? What is an economy? What is power? We ended the day visioning our own worlds beyond the current inequities of today. Of course this turned into an impromptu dance party - reminding us that it is joy that we do this for. 

On Day two of SJLA, we explored what it means to organize, talked about how oppression operates on multiple levels, and had an organizing scavenger hunt, where youth had to come up with ideas of ways to organize in different forms; through protests, mutual aid, direct action, advocacy, campaigns, and more. The following week, continuing our journey into organizing models, we visited Rise Up Kingston and learned how to phone bank, along with learning about their abolitionist campaign to reinvest funds back into the Kingston community, and away from policing. 

We then turned our focus on self liberation, and had a feast organized for the youth where they made self affirmation candles after visiting an exhibit based on belonging at Art Omi called To Feel Beloved on the Earth, by Jeffrey Gibson. We reflected on who we are going to be when we are free, what it means to feel we belong, and to release what no longer serves us. The day was filled with so much medicine: laughter, conversations on radical acceptance of our identities, and curiosity about ourselves and each other.

We then had a visit from Jalal of Sweet Freedom Farm who made abolitionist cider with us as we told stories at the bonfire. How we sweeten our food is political. He taught us about the roots of his program to bring food to prisons. And about how abolitionists protested sugar because it was harvested from plantations and used cider and syrup instead as sweeteners. 

Our closing journey was a day of care as liberation, where we dug deep into thinking about what care means in the many concentric circles of our lives. Our students got deep into their inner lives, thinking about their conflict patterns and where they learned them. They were willing to question how they show up in conflict and how conflict is part of movement and that learning to move through it will determine our movement's strength. We made sugar scrubs, and a Senior Fellow led an affirmation workshop to close. 

This season was a reminder to slow down, to build relationships, to practice forgiveness, and to remember to play! What a powerful group of youth we had guiding us toward our North Star.

ROOTS & REBELS GARDEN CLUB

Tuesdays, 3pm - 6:00pm | September - November 2021 | Ages 8-14

Get your hands dirty at the River City Garden. With Sharece Johnson and Heylan Tsumagari.

This year, Roots and Rebels felt like it took on a new shape and culture to the way we do things. First, we gather to decompress from our days through art and conversation. Then we release energy with a fun field game, often playing team games like kick ball or a game where we give each team items that they have to use to collectively get across the floor of “lava”, and various items they must use in order to cross the “lava” covered ground. Through all of these, we have the chance to support friendship building and team bonding. After this we do some occasional gardening, where we learn about medicinal properties of plants or the practice of flipping the garden beds, playing with worms and tasting numbing plants and discovering unfamiliar things that grow. After all of that we gather to collectively make a meal together and eat together. Roots & Rebels grew into a place to collectively tend to our various needs as they popped up. You needed to do some homework? We had a homework table. You needed to talk and reflect with a friend? We had a hands-on craft table to therapeutically chat and create at the same time. You needed the medicine of fire? We had a fire going most days. Roots & Rebels was what it needed to be for each different person, and each person was exactly what Roots & Rebels needed to grow into such a creative, supportive space.

REGEN TEENS

Mondays and Wednesdays | September - November 2021 | Ages 13+

Hands-on gardening & creative entrepreneurship for teen leaders. With Briggin Scharf and Suanny Upegui

This is the first year we completed 3-seasons of ReGen employment with our ReGen teen staff! Our program grew to include a new lead facilitator, Suanny Upegui, and we were able to double our teen staff roster. Everyone’s highlight of the year was launching a bike-blender smoothie business, which popped-up at different Hudson community events and markets from July - September. Teen staff participated in every aspect of the business, from harvesting fresh, local, and chemical-free fruit from local farms for the smoothies, to crafting each recipe on their own, to designing the entire smoothie booth set up, including vibrant hand-painted signs! 

The full year of ReGen began in April, when we planted the seeds for many different regenerative businesses ideas: ReGenDog (dog walking + trash pick up service), ReGen Drip (a sustainable clothing line with original silk screened graphics, upcycled clothing, and plant-based dyes), and a human-powered bike smoothie business. We got to showcase all of our incubator business ventures to the Hudson community in late May at ReGen Fest; this collaborative food justice event hosted at Kitty’s Market and featured BIPOC community healers, artists, and earth-workers including The Edge Project, Grow Black Hudson, TrueFoods, and Rigor Hill Farm. 

During the Fall semester, ReGen focused our efforts on improving systems for our compost businesses: a year-round food-scraps drop off service for local customers. We visited BK Rot in Brooklyn to learn more about their urban composting operation and business structure. Back at the Kite’s Nest compost site, next to our newly built Greenhouse classroom, ReGen built a 3-bay composting bin to increase decomposition health and efficiency. 

We achieved so much this year and we are so proud of our ReGen 2021 cohort for taking risks, growing entrepreneurship skills, learning how to be part of a team, and showing up as their full, creative, enthusiastic selves! Thank you to: Ari, Gavin, Jah, Jay, Jovary, Juan, Juju, Kenny, Larenze, Mariah, Natailyia, Oziah, Rhianna, Romello, Sarai, and T! 

Some additional ReGen highlights of 2021 include: planting an urban fruit orchard and native pollinator sanctuary at River City Garden, and starting a teen-managed instagram account (@kitesnest_regenteens), hosting multiple community garden and compost workshops with other teen organizations, families and volunteers, and visiting Sweet Freedom Farm for seasonal farm-school trainings and workdays!