I have been loving my first couple weeks! As an intern for A Studio in the Woods (ASITW), I’ve been helping them run their nature/art summer camp. ASITW is a magical Tulane-affiliated artist residency and forest preserve on the West Bank. Every summer, they host a summer camp that incorporates that cool intersection of art and science. The instructors I’ve been working with are wonderful female mentors and artists. They have so much cool experience doing work that involves upcycling used materials, incorporating concepts of ecology into their work, and bringing art into the classroom. I found out about this internship through a friend of mine, and I reached out to the residency director about potentially working with them. If anyone has any questions about it, please reach out!
My responsibilities vary each day but the majority of what I do is make sure that campers are engaged and learning. My work here relates to NCI’s mission in that I am helping to create a more holistic learning experience that involves both artistic and scientific creativity. Each week we have a new scientist that teaches the campers (and me) about the forest here. The first week we had a botanist and this week we have an entomologist. It’s only been a couple weeks, but I already feel like I’ve learned so much, whether that be how to identify simple versus compound leaves or how to make painting imaginary trees appealing for kids who only are interested in baseball. We set up some general rules with the kids the first day, and it struck me that these guidelines apply to more than just snack time: don’t take more than you need, respect the natural world and living things around you, leave no trace or better yet leave your surroundings better than you found them, etc. Maybe adults should attend this camp to learn these philosophical teachings, too.
In the coming weeks, I hope to learn a lot more about native Louisiana ecology, about how to best get kids involved and excited to learn even if art/nature isn’t their thing, and about how art can be used as a tool to learn about nature and science.