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What is Neighborhood Bridges?
Founded in 1997 by Peter Brosius, artistic director of the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, and Jack Zipes, Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Neighborhood Bridges is a comprehensive program of storytelling and creative drama designed to help children develop their critical literacy skills and to transform them into storytellers of their own lives.
Based on Zipes' book Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives (1999) and Speaking Out (2004), this year-round program brings teaching artists into affiliated classroom on a weekly basis to work collaboratively with classroom teachers. Through theater games, storytelling, improvisation, and creative writing, students develop their abilities to write, speak, and think critically.
Though Neighborhood Bridges has concentrated on elementary schools in urban settings, the work is not limited to a specific grade, level, or school. The flexible storytelling and theater techniques that we employ to animate the students are intended to enable them to become autonomous thinkers, and they have been used with children, students, and adults in preschools, high schools, and universities, as well as other institutions of learning. Our emphasis is on social and individual transformation and building bridges between people and communities through creative storytelling and improvisational theatre.
Neighborhood Bridges not only improves the students' ability to read, write, and think critically, but also develops their collaborative and public speaking skills. Bridges helps young people to grapple with the complicated issues, conflicts and questions found in today's diverse, changing society. It challenges young people to identify the roots of social problems, examine their own feelings, and propose creative, non-violent solutions.
Implicit in all our work is a remark made by the renowned psychologist Jerome Bruner:
"I conceive of schools and preschools as serving a renewed function within our changing societies. This entails building school cultures that operate as mutual communities of learners, involved jointly in solving problems with all contributing to the process of educating one another."
• 500 students participating*
• 8 Minneapolis and Saint Paul schools*
• 18 classrooms served*
• 10 professional Teaching Artists*
• Weekly two-hour classes for 31 weeks
• Weekly planning sessions with classroom teachers
• Students publish a book of their original stories
• Students correspond with a pen pal from another participating school
• Bridges Day! Students see a performance at CTC and interact with their pen pals
• Crossing Bridges Festival! By incorporating all the skills the students learned from the year long bridges program, the students perform their original plays on the CTC main stage for family and friends
*As of September 2006
"I like acting and writing out what you write or tell" Alex, age 12
"I've learned writing more because I used to write a little and now I write so much" Briana, age 10 1/2
"I've learned that you have to use teamwork and participation" Denny, age 12
"I learned that you can make just about anything happen with a little bit of hard work" Kumara, age 10 1/2
"I learned that I have a bigger imagination than I thought I did. I also learned that reading is fun." Bryant, age 9
"It's great seeing children transform and transcend!" John E. Cearnal-Poole, Classroom Teacher, Lucy Craft Lany at Cleveland Park Community School
The Children's Theatre Company
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Kiyoko Motoyama Sims
Assistant Director of Education - Community Engagement
(612) 872-5133 ksims@childrenstheatre.org
www.childrenstheatre.org
Children's Theatre Company
The Tony Award winning Children's Theatre Company is nationally and internationally acclaimed as America's flagship theatre for young people and families. Each year, the Children's Theatre Company's public performances and Theatre Arts Training program serve nearly 350,000 people.
The Children's Theatre Company exists to create extraordinary theatre experiences that educate, challenge, and inspire young people.
Peter C Brosius - Artistic Director | Gabriella Calicchio - Managing Director
Neighborhood Bridges Team
Louise Thoreson - Interim Director of Education
Kiyoko Motoyama Sims - Assistant Director of Education - Community Engagement
Maria Asp - Neighborhood Bridges Captain
Tessa Flynn - Community Engagement Coordinator
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