Arts & ʻĀina Explorations 2023
Our goal for Arts & ʻĀina Explorations 2023 was to create a network and resource bank for community access that allows our local teachers to feel supported in the critical work they offer in our keikiʻs education and in the general welfare of our communityʻs future. We wanted to lavish them in art-filled reinforcement of creative classroom skills and strategies, ideas and inspiration, along with practical daily cultural learning practices. With our local environment as our theme, we placed our feet and hands in the mud, soil, salt and streams.
In partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi, Maui Campus, and with sponsorship from both Makana Aloha Foundation and the Atherton Family Foundation, Team Shine along with our network of helpers and volunteers hosted 30 teachers from 9 different schools here on Maui. We immersed them in 4 days of cultural protocol practices, creative dance movement and training, multi-media arts skills and applications, and full place-based knowledge-grounding experiences. ...And Fun!! Did we mention it was incredibly fun?!
"Pu paʻakai kākou." Let us partake of salt together.
~ Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings
Our three Artist Educators were impressive in their ike, (knowledge), and plentiful in their nā makau (skills).
Mauli Ola Cook, Creative Dance, Drama and Story-telling, with a deep background in Hawaiian cultural protocol and hula, Mauli is fluent olelo, Hawaiian language, and teaches 3 days a week in Hawaiian immersion schools in her home on Kauaʻi when she is not traveling.
Hōkūao Pellegrino of Nahoʻana Farm, Sustainability & ʻĀina-Based Learning Designer & Facilitator at Kamehameha Schools. Hōkūao is a native son of Maui, an anthropologist, geologist, a social activist and cultural change-maker in Hawaiian Agriculture and forest restoration. He provides access to his familyʻs 5th generation kalo farm in Wailuku to educate and inspire as many as possible.
Shelley Toon Lindberg, Executive Director of Arts in Education of the Gorge (AIEIG). Shelley is a multi-media Artist and works with multiple native Alaskan communities and tribes using her art as a lens to teach and observe climate change. Her vast learning experiences and the gift of the many arts styles she teaches, offers layers of arts integration in science, social studies and many other skills in hands-on creations in story-telling.
