Hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of
writers who can see alternatives to how we live now.
--Ursula K. Le Guin at the National Book Awards
What is the Octavia Project
Young people are already envisioning, writing, and
creating alternative ways of living, but they need to be given the space, the
encouragement, the platform, and the tools to make it happen. With your
help, the Octavia Project will bring this opportunity to young women from
Brooklyn's under-served neighborhoods. These girls have important,
world-altering stories living inside them, but without the support and space to
flesh them out, these narratives may languish away in the purgatory of good
ideas.
We want to use girls’ passion in sci-fi,
fantasy, and fan-fiction to teach them skills in science, technology,
art, and writing, equipping them with skills to dream and build new futures
for themselves and their communities. Our inspiration and namesake is Octavia
E. Butler, who
broke barriers in writing and science fiction to become an award-winning and
internationally recognized author (
Kindred,
Lilith's Brood). We are inspired
by her visions of possible futures and commitment to social justice.
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Twelve girls, ages 13-18, will participate in this free
summer program. In the first workshop a girl might develop her story set two
thousand years in the future. In the next workshop, she works with a
professional architect to engineer a physical model of her own imaginary future
city. In another workshop, girls might learn to code a simple program that
morphs their names into strange aliases that inspire fictional adventures. Or
they’ll learn the basics of circuits and light up the pages of their work with
LEDs. They might even use Twine, an interactive storytelling platform, to share
their narratives with the world.
No matter the final curriculum, our girls will have access
to women working in science and tech, internship and online publishing
opportunities, and college-aged mentors.
The Octavia Project is the brainchild of a
robotics teacher, Meghan McNamara, and a science fiction author, Chana Porter.
In order to keep this program 100% free for participants,
we need to raise $12,000 by May 15. Your generous donations will cover
costs such as:
-
Workshop space for one month
-
Payment for teaching artists and stipends for guest speakers
-
Production of a gallery showcase at the end of the summer
-
Healthy snacks for the girls (brain food!)
-
Computer software (InDesign, Photoshop, a Steam account
loaded full of games)
-
Art and tech materials (soldering irons, paint, LEDs, foam
board, batteries)
-
Liability insurance (boring but necessary!)
If books have made you excited for the future, please
consider donating to the Octavia Project! Each $1,000 we raise will
underwrite one girl to participate in the Octavia Project for one month.
If you help us surpass our original $12,000 goal and hit our
FIRST STRETCH GOAL of $16,000, we’ll expand to have SIXTEEN workshops in our
summer series–30% more workshop time for each girl!
And, if we can meet our SECOND STRETCH GOAL of $30,000,
we’ll be able to commit to a first AND second year of the Octavia Project, as
you’ll help pay for things like a professional grant writer to secure funding
for 2016!!!
The Impact
Sci-fi and fantasy can be used to imagine new
ways of living and new futures. But girls of color and immigrant girls
rarely see themselves in the futures they read about in popular sci-fi and
fantasy. The Octavia Project will expose girls from low-income
neighborhoods and under-served schools to sci-fi and fantasy that includes
them, and will give them the space and resources to imagine and build
alternative futures for themselves and their communities. With our
program, girls will be encouraged to dream big while being empowered with skills
to design their own futures.
Additionally, the Octavia Project will use
girls’ own interest in sci-fi to unlock their passion for science, technology,
engineering, and math BEFORE they internalize the familiar narrative of “I’m
not a math person” or “Science just isn’t my thing”.
Why? Because a majority of students who enter high school
excited about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), leave school uninterested in these subjects. Because girls and students from
low-income homes are significantly less likely to be engaged in STEM as they
grow older, thanks to unequal access and biased norms.
With your support, the Octavia Project will offer dynamic
programming that connects skill-building in science and tech with girls’
personal interests and hobbies, forging a safe space for teenage girls to learn
through joy and creation.
My first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy.
--Octavia Butler
Girls in the program will gain allies,
resources, and a relationship to life-long learning—all things that youth with
limited resources need to succeed. They'll leave the program with a new
connection to inquiry, based not around mastery but discovery through
iteration. Additionally, through internships or job mentorships, they'll gain
connections, experience, and 21st century skills that enable them to
thrive in school and in life. They'll become practiced and active
participants online, adding their voices to a space that is
desperately in need of more women’s voices. And the Octavia Project
will enable them to navigate the wilds of the internet alongside guides and
mentors, with the chance for critical discussions around representation,
privacy, and responsibility.
Octavia Project: Responsible Growth
As artists, teachers, and activists, it is sometimes easy to
volunteer to do things we love without compensation. However, while keeping our
overhead costs low, the Octavia Project is committed to paying our teaching
artists for their time in order to keep our work sustainable, energized, and
fair. We've already applied to a range of national and local grants to
continue the Octavia Project in 2016-17 and help us maintain this commitment to
fair work—but in the meantime we need your help NOW to launch this program
this summer!
