Author Archives: Carolyn Ratcliffe

Garden Stories: Leadership Workshops

Helping your life story bloom

Garden Stories: Leadership Workshops provides interactive programs for children designed to:

  • Heighten the children’s curiosity about gardening and nature
  • Promote healthier life styles by learning more about food sources
  • Increase children’s self-confidence and ability to collaborate with others
  • Strengthen ties between the children’s organization, parents, community garden and other partners involved in our program 

Garden Stories: Leadership Workshops works collaboratively under the ALF program umbrella.

Garden Story Books 2019

At the end of the spring semester we created book from our drawings to show anyone and everyone and especially our parents everything that we learned. Both Scott and Nicole’s classes created a book. Please download and look at all of our accomplishments this spring.

ScottCalkins3rdGradeBookDownload
Nicole-Whitmans-3Rd-Grade-Class2019Download

Who We Are

ALF and Garden Stories partnered in 2017 to launch a series of interdisciplinary workshops for the Children’s Workshop School and the Campos Community garden.

  • Carolyn Ratcliffe, Artistic Director, Art Loisaida Foundation
  • Holly O’Grady, Founding Director, Garden Stories: Leadership Workshops

Bios for Carolyn and Holly can be found here

Instructors:

  • Christopher Batenhorst, Garden workshops
  • Gladys Feliciano, Art workshops
  • Linda Gelman, Storytelling workshop
  • GianLuca Giovanetti, Healthy cooking workshops
  • Carolyn Zezima, Garden and cooking workshops 
  • Dan Rothchild – Bee keeping/Soils
  • Carolyn Ratcliffe
  • Children’s Workshop School
  • Dorothy Cantwell
  • Gary Mortson

Volunteers

  • Melania 
  • Robert
  • Sarah 

For further information on Garden Stories: Leadership Workshops contact carolynratcliffe@icloud.com

We Grew Our Own Pizza!

We didn’t just create the pizza, we grew the veggies!

Gnocco’s staff showed the children how to create a pizza. We then all created pizzas together using herbs and vegetables we grew at Campos community Garden: oregeno, basil, thyme, marjoram and tomatoes.

Claudio and Rossella shows us how to make the pizza dough.

The dough is super elastic. Rosella stretched and stretched a little ball of dough to make a big pie. The dough was squishy when I poked at it.

The pizzas sure tasted super good. The children documented the process by drawing and writing in their notebooks.

You can see some of our drawing in the book we published at the end of the year:

Bees, Bees and More Bees

Thse working bees are all girls? That’s fantastic.

Dan Rothchild came by and introduced us to bees. Did you know that all of the bees are girls? The queen bee lays all the eggs and the workers bee do all of the work. The drones freeload and the only thing they do is inseminate the queen at the very beginning of her life. Isn’t that typical. This is what Dan said.

Dan had the children draw different parts of the bee to understand how they work.

Workshop curricula have included:

  • Science and Exploration: Garden basics – Why Bees Matter?
  • Creative Problem Solving: Working in pairs to build incredible insects
  • Healthy Food: Working collaboratively in teams to create healthy, tasty treats using garden vegetables
  • Exhibiting art work in the garden for parents and community to view
  • Origins of food: Making fresh pasta/pizza
  • Science and Exploration: Spring planting – creating starter plants from seeds
  • Storytelling:  Working in teams to create a story about the garden/cooking experiences
  • Inviting parents and the community to see the stories and tour the garden
  • Creating a book from their artwork

Workshops

Since 2017 we have designed and implemented a comprehensive program for third graders at the Children’s Workshop School.  Our participating partners for our interactive program include the Campos Community Garden near the school and a local community restaurant, Gnocco.

Children’s gardening program at Campos Community Garden
John Marty – Videographer

Our programs add the “A” (arts) to STEM programs by encouraging children to tap into their creativity and try out new ideas.  Garden Stories draws inspiration from life lessons learned through gardening and the arts. 

Our current workshop program, sponsored by the NYCC Cultural Immigrant Initiative with a pass through grant through Downtown Music Productions, with support from Children’s Workshop PTA and Gnocco restaurant ran from September 12, 2018 through June 14, 2019.

  • Drawing the worm
    Drawing to learn
  • Q&A
  • More Earthworms!
  • Drawing the Earthworm
    Earthworms Galore
  • Using rt as a medium to teach
    More Worms!
  • Lettuces

Preservation

Because so many artists are under the threat of losing their homes as well as studio and venue space, Art Loisaida Foundation takes an active interest in supporting preservation initiatives and works with organizations, such as the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, to try to preserve the architectural heritage of our neighborhood. This was partly accomplished by our sponsoring of the first Annual “Meet and Greet” at the Theater for the New City as part of our “PRESERVATION: Preserve or Forget” Exhibit. We continue to co-sponsor lectures and receptions with LESPI.

Tompkins Sq. Library Art Gallery Project

Art Loisaida Foundation brought together a group of concerned professionals who developed a proposal to improve the art gallery space at the Tompkins Square Library. Hugues Fournier, a landscape architect, designed plantings for the entrance ways, a sculpture court and a green roof addition, while local architect Catalina Salazar did drawings for the gallery itself. Sculptor Kathy Creutzburg produced drawings for new planters, and contractors Bob Reid and David Leslie of Reid Build did estimates for construction. Jerry Pagane, an artist who has a sign company, initiated this project by lettering a new sign for the gallery. This project has been presented to the NYPL as well as to various local elected officials such as Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, and Boro President Scott Stringer. We continued to advocate for this space as it was one of the few free venues open to artists in the East Village. Due to staff changes, the suggested changes were never implemented. The gallery has been redesignated as a community space hosting various programs such as knitting, Bingo, and children’s story hour.