Healing Through Animation:
Helping Teens from New Orleans and Baton Rouge
FilmAid International has brought together a group of local and national organizations including Listen Up! and the Red Stick International Animation Festival to present an animation workshop to young students whose lives have been forever changed by the devastating impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
AnimAction, a Hollywood-based organization that provides animation ‘tool boxes’ and training to teachers and students, led a three-day workshop in Baton Rouge, Louisiana earlier this month. Seventy students and 11 teachers from five different schools – including Scotlandville Middle School, whose entire student body is made up of young people displaced from New Orleans – learned how to produce 30-second classical animations. Through this project, teens from New Orleans and Baton Rouge were able to creatively reflect on their experiences of the disaster and have their voices be heard while learning a skill that can be replicated in the classroom.
"It's been a really great experience. The topic was very relevant because so many people went through [Katrina] - I went through it. We didn't know whether our house was blown away. It's been really positive to work through it, not fear all your life. I think animation helps give light-heartedness to the situation; you need a little bit of comedy in every dark situation. I'm proud of our animation." -Sara Schneider, 16, Istrouma High School
"I like that they gave us a chance to voice what we think. Now we can teach the rest of our class how to do this." -Skyler Glasper, 15, Woodlawn High School
"It's a way to approach a serious topic in a fun kind of way. People need closure and need to lighten up. We've been heavy laden for months at a time - we need some of this to lighten us up." -Stephanie Griffin, Scotlandville School teacher, New Orleans evacuee
The students’ animations will be premiered at the Red Stick International Animation Festival in Baton Rouge on April 22nd. We hope you will visit our website (www.filmaid.org) over the coming weeks for links to the students’ animations, which will also be shown to refugees in our youth media project in East Africa. For more information on the Baton Rouge animation project click here.
