Telling stories and craft-making are two healthy, creative activities that benefit teen girls, helping them gain confidence in their abilities and encouraging them to try new things. One of the options we offer our students at Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest is instruction in making the how-to or demonstration video.

My video “The Fairy House” is an example of a how-to, story-telling video. The inspiration came from a newspaper story about Theresa Ojibway, a woman from New Jersey who makes fairy houses. She makes tiny beds, chairs, ladders, and doors from natural materials, and leaves them in parks for children to find.

Theresa Ojibway’s story inspired me to create a video about a woman who makes fairy furniture. Over a two-week period in the summer of 2016, I did the following:

• researched photographs of Ms. Ojibway’s creations,
• made my own versions with twigs, glue, twine, fabric, and craft-store items,
• wrote the screenplay,
• filmed myself in my backyard.

It was an extremely enjoyable project, as it allowed me to fulfill the roles of screenwriter, actor (just my hands!), set designer, prop builder, videographer, editor, and producer. The only task I gave to someone else was that of narrator. A former student of mine allowed me to record her telling the story of the Fairy House. (My son painted the fairy-mobile.)

I filmed the scenes with redwood trees in a park near my house, and since it was summer, I had to deal the hard bright light. I used various settings in Adobe Premiere’s Lumetri Color to get the dreamy, brownish look of an old book or postcard. For the furniture-building scenes, I covered a plastic table with brown postal paper and shot some of the scenes through pots of flowers.

I have lots of “blooper” video, times when the wind scattered my carefully arranged twigs, or the fragile, twiggy furniture kept falling over, or when my dog, who appears at the end, refused to stay on camera. I’ve often thought of making a video of just those scenes!

Enrollment is open.

Warmly,

Erica

Erica Goss

Founder and Director

Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

I’m happy to have a post from our instructor, Kacie Clark! Kacie writes about the need for healthy communities for teen girls, and how to help them feel valued and included.

Now that I’m expecting my own child, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting on my childhood and adolescence, and how I can help my child navigate through the inevitable rough patches that the teenage years, in particular, may bring.

The word “community” keeps reoccurring to me: community regarding feeling a sense of belonging, of kinship. I think one of the hardest parts of being a teenager is feeling like you’re alone in the universe; that you’re the only person like you and no one else can understand your struggles and your story. Having a place to create and nourish friendships with like-minded people would have been a huge boon for me.

At Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest, creating this sense of community is both integral to and inherent in the classes we teach: we encourage cooperation and trust between our girls to help foster the bonds of friendship and inclusion. We learn together, motivate and assist each other, and work together on our projects to create beautiful and meaningful pieces of art.

As late author Susan Vreeland wrote:

“Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.”

In our classes, we ask our girls what they want to say to the world, what they want to share. By working together in a community, by creating ties to one another, one girl’s voice becomes many, becomes determined and strong.

Enrollment is open. 

Kacie

Kacie Clark, Instructor, Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

Parents deciding on a summer enrichment activity for their teen girls naturally have many questions. Below, I have listed answers to the most common questions I’ve received about Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: What will my daughter learn?

A: She will engage in creative writing, storyboarding, video production, setting up scenes, set design, directing, filming, videography, editing, special effects, and animation.

Q: What is the student-teacher ratio?

A: We accept a maximum of 24 students, or 8 students per teacher.

Q: Your camp seems expensive. Why is it priced at $589?

A: Our camp is two weeks in length. Camp days are six hours long. That’s sixty hours of high-quality instruction in a supportive, small-class setting at less than ten dollars per hour. Considering what our students learn, it’s a bargain!

Q: Is this a new camp? Have you run this camp in the past?

A: Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest is new to Eugene. I co-ran two similar camps in the California Bay Area, in 2015 and 2016. For more information on those camps, please visit Media Poetry Studio’s website.

Q: During the summer, I’d like my daughter to spend some time outdoors. Your camp seems mostly indoors.

A: We will spend approximately ¼ of our time outdoors. We have photography and filming field trips planned for Skinner Butte Lookout and Skinner Butte Park.

Q: What will my daughter have to show for her time at your camp?

A: Your daughter will have several short videos she made herself. She will have had the experience of working in a small, supportive group, of increased self-esteem, and the feeling of empowerment that comes from learning and working in a team-oriented environment.

Enrollment is open.

Warmly,

Erica

Erica Goss

Founder and Director

Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

Every teen girl needs encouragement to take on new challenges, handle stress, set goals, and develop a healthy sense of self.

At Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest, we celebrate and respect teen girls. We understand their need for acceptance and their growing independence. Our core values reflect our beliefs in the potential of every girl:

• Teamwork. Each girl is a valued part of a creative team.
• Trust. Our students learn to trust themselves and their intuitions.
• Courage. We create a safe space for our students to explore what interests them.
• Creativity. We believe that every girl has talent.
• It’s ok to make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn, grow, and discover new things.

Our list of core values reflects our motto, which is “A supportive community for girls.” We truly believe that the creative potential of teen girls is a major force for good in the world.

Enrollment is open.

Warmly,

Erica

Erica Goss

Founder and Director

Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

Here’s a list of fifteen feature films directed by women, debuting in 2018. Some are already out, and some are still coming:

1. The Strange Ones
2. The Party
3. A Wrinkle in Time
4. What They Had
5. Blockers
6. The Rider
7. Zama
8. I Feel Pretty
9. The Spy Who Dumped Me
10. Barbie
11. The Nightingale
12. The Darkest Minds
13. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
14. Mulan (live action version)
15. Mary, Queen of Scots

I’m going to see them all!

I’ve always loved the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which I read to my children when they were little. In the book, a boy gives a delicious chocolate chip cookie to a mouse. The mouse loves the cookie, which leads him to ask for things to go with it: a glass of milk, a straw to drink the milk with, a mirror to see if he has a milk moustache, etc. Soon the mouse is asking for a story, a nap, and eventually, another cookie.

When I discovered video poetry in 2012, I was just like the mouse: my curiosity led me in a number of directions. First I watched hundreds of videos. Soon I reached out to video artists, interviewing them for my column The Third Form. A year or so later, I began to experiment with making my own video poems, and soon after, ran Media Poetry Studio, a summer camp dedicated to teaching the art to teen girls. Now that I live in Eugene, Oregon, I’ve created Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest, a summer program dedicated to teaching teen girls how to make their own short videos.

My “cookie” was a chance encounter at a writers’ conference in the winter of 2012. I wandered into a conference titled “Poetry Video in the Shadow of Music Video – Performance, Document, and Film.” When I entered Boulevard Room A at the Chicago Hilton and took a seat at the back of the room, I had no idea that my life would change. Now video-making is an important and growing part of my artistic practice.

If you give a girl a camera, what will she do next? Imagine the possibilities!

Enrollment is open.

Warmly,

Erica

Erica Goss

Founder and Director

Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

At Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest, we believe in girls: their potential, their intelligence, and their creativity. We believe that giving a girl the tools to express herself is one of the most powerful things anyone can do.

Girls aged 11-17 are particularly vulnerable. Messages leap out at them everywhere, telling them how to look, how to think, and how to be. At Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest, we give the tools of image-making to girls, allowing them to tell us how they think and feel. This act of expression empowers girls in so many ways.

As an educator, I’ve worked with teen girls for many years. I’ve listened to them tell me about their lives, their stresses, the expectations placed on them, and their plans for the future. The passion of these girls to make the world a better place never ceases to impress me.

Our goal is to foster a supportive community for girls. We listen to them. We help them access their creativity. These are our future teachers, doctors, poets, and filmmakers. What are their dreams, hopes, fears and ambitions? How do they see the world?

Our mission is to help girls answer those questions for themselves.

Enrollment is open.

Warmly,

Erica

Erica Goss

Founder and Director

Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

In twelve weeks Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest will open its doors for summer camp! Camp will take place at St. Mary’s Church in downtown Eugene, Oregon. We have two rooms for our workshops: one is our classroom and the other is our lab. The rooms are across the hall from each other for easy transitions between activities.

Right now, we’re working on getting the word out about our camp. On March 2^nd, we mailed over six hundred postcards to local schools. We’re also posting them in various locations around Eugene and Springfield.

We also share content about the importance of all-girls’ education, girls and technology, and creative art opportunities for girls at our Facebook page.

We’re creating lesson plans for our workshops that will teach students how to use technology (cameras, iPads, editing software) to make beautiful, individual short videos.

In the coming weeks, I will be sharing lots of information with you about the camp: our mission, guiding principles, history, bios, lesson plans, and much more.

Enrollment is open.

Stay tuned!

Warmly,

Erica

Erica Goss

Founder and Director, Digital Storytelling of the Pacific Northwest

An inspiring interview with independent filmmaker Angie Reza Tures.

A Pacific Northwest original.

From the website:

Reel Grrls equips and empowers girls ages 11 to 21 to engage critically and creatively with digital media to create positive social change. Reel Grrls also provides media literacy training to help grrls, gender non-conforming youth, and male allies from diverse communities interpret and respond to the flood of gendered and racialized images and messages young people encounter in our media saturated world.