Left: Avalanche Arts’ Kathie diStefano teaching an “Operation Trash” workshop in a Rotterdam school. Right: Kathie diStefano conducting an environmentally-themed workshop at a school in Baltimore.

Theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano from Rotterdam’s Avalanche Arts employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions. Ms. diStefano coordinated several activities in Baltimore during the 2017 spring school semester, including:

1. Operation Trash virtual exchange

“Operation Trash” project is designed to educate and connect high school students in Baltimore and the greater Rotterdam area. This virtual exchange project focuses on environmental themes. Improvisational theatre techniques and remote learning techniques are used to teach sustainability, trash reduction, recycling, and inspire environmental stewardship. Through the use of classroom activities, improvisational theatre techniques, community events, student-made videos, and social media, teenagers in both cities learn about sustainability, trash reduction, recycling, and get inspired to become environment stewards for their communities. Trash serves as a theme for a cross-cultural exchange. The project leverages an existing environmental educational program developed by Avalanche Arts and used in Rotterdam schools.

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Baltimore, MD USA — March 2017

Baltimore Office of Sustainability has provided a Green Healthy Smart Challenge 2017 grant to Baltimore’s Benjamin Franklin High School (BFHS) for the Operation Trash Virtual Exchange project designed to educate high school students at Baltimore’s Benjamin Franklin High School (BFHS) and connect them with Wolfert van Borselen high school in the Rotterdam, the Netherlands in spring 2017. Improvisational theatre techniques and remote learning techniques will be used to teach students about sustainability, trash reduction, recycling, and to inspire them to become environment stewards for their communities. The grant includes a stipend for Kathie diStefano from Rotterdam’s Avalanche Arts to design curriculum materials. The grant is from the Baltimore Office of Sustainability’s Green, Healthy, Smart Challenge grant program.

Theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano from Rotterdam’s Avalanche Arts employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions.  Ms. diStefano visited Baltimore in October 2016 to plan several upcoming exchange projects.

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Baltimore — April 17, 2016

Rotterdam theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions in Heijplaat in Rotterdam. diStefano’s organization Avalanche Arts (Dutch name: Stichting Lawine) has completed several exchange projects between Baltimore and Rotterdam and is planning more.

Avalanche Arts is planning several projects designed to educate students about sustainability and environmental stewardship:

1. Pen Pal Project linking Baltimore high school students with counterparts in the greater Rotterdam area (More info)
   
2. Improvisational theatre workshops for Baltimore public high school students (info below)
   

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Rotterdam theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions in Heijplaat in Rotterdam. She did an artist residency in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay in December 2013 and is returning to Baltimore area in fall 2015.

On 3 October and 10 October 2015, she is giving workshops at De Nederlandse School in Bethesda. This is for kids who speak Dutch or are learning Dutch. These workshops are open to kids that are not students of De Nederlandse School; there is a fee for non-students. The two Saturdays are stand-alone workshops – kids can attend one or both. Suitable for a wide variety of ages. Using the medium of theatre & play, kids will learn about sustainability, trash/recycling, and ecology themes. This event is produced in conjunction with DC Dutch.

More information:

www.dcdutch.org/events/operatie-afval-speciaal-voor-kinderen

Rotterdam theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions in Heijplaat in Rotterdam. She did an artist residency in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay in December 2013 and is returning to Baltimore area in fall 2015.

On September 26, 2015, she will give a workshop about trash and sustainability topics at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance as part of the daylong celebration of the 30th anniversary of Baltimore’s sister city relationships with Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Xiamen, China. The daytime activities include performances and workshops for kids & adults; the evening features a reception.

More information about the Sept 26 event: baltimoresistercities.org/anniversary2015

Rotterdam theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions in Heijplaat in Rotterdam. She did an artist residency in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay in December 2013 and is returning in September-October 2015 for another residency in this neighborhood. This is in conjunction with the 30th anniversary celebration of the Baltimore-Rotterdam sister city relationship. We are currently seeking funding to support these activities.

Preliminary list of activities for 2015:

Sep 26 — Workshop during the daylong celebration of 30 year Baltimore-Rotterdam anniversary at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance

Oct 5–9 — Weeklong series of theater improv workshops for Benjamin Franklin senior high school students

Oct 3 & 10 — Sustainability workshops for students at De Nederlandse School (a joint project with DC Dutch)

October — Workshops with Filbert Street Community Garden

October — Planning sessions for pen pal exchange with Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center (affiliated with Living Classrooms) and a school near Rotterdam

Fall — Bring a sculpture from Rotterdam to be installed in Baltimore (a mirror copy of a sculpture in Rotterdam harbor) in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the sister city relationship. C. Steinweg has generously offered to ship the sculpture to Baltimore. C. Steinweg is a logistics provider headquarted in Rotterdam specializing in the international transportation, handling & warehousing of non-ferrous metals & soft commodities; they are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their Baltimore office this year. More information about the sculpture is here: sealsculpturerotterdam.pdf

Kathie diStefano conducting a workshop for Baltimore schoolchildren in December 2013

More about this artist

Date: Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Chesapeake Arts Center, 194 Hammonds Lane, Brooklyn Park MD 21225
Admission: Free

UMBC professors present their collaborative research in two Baltimore communities with a shared legacy of industrial development: Brooklyn-Curtis Bay (Baybrook) and Sparrows Point. The event features Mapping Baybrook, a media-based documentation of projects in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and a film screening of Mill Stories: Remembering Sparrows Point Steel Mill. Members of Sparrows Point and Brooklyn-Curtis Bay communities also discuss the challenges they face and possible futures.

The Brooklyn-Curtis Bay community is also a subject of Harbor Traces, Baltimore-Rotterdam committee’s ongoing artist exchange that pairs this area of Baltimore with a parallel neighborhood in Rotterdam called Heijplaat. Artist Steve Bradley has been instrumental in this exchange over the past couple years. Today’s talk is a good opportunity to hear more about his activities in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay

For more information, visit baltimoretraces.org

Rotterdam theatre artist and educator Kathie diStefano employs participatory techniques and theatre art to create awareness with youth and seniors about the environment through creative strategies to recycle and make smart consumer decisions in Heijplaat in Rotterdam. She did an artist residency in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay in December 2013 and returned to Baltimore in December 2014 to plan future exchange activities.

Kathie diStefano’s activities in December 2014 included:

Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center (MCEEC) — diStefano conducted meetings and workshop with Living Classrooms staff. Planning for 2 digital pen pal programs between Baltimore and Rotterdam area students. Masonville Cove also expressed interest in working on hosting a workshop for diStefano with a larger audience

Nederlandse School — diStefano met with the leaders of this Dutch language school in Bethesda, Maryland to plan Fall 2015 sustainability-themed workshops for students.

Benjamin Franklin High School — diStefano met with Kelly Klinefelter, who invited her to run a series of improv workshops in Fall 2015 for her senior English class students focusing on developing social skills and working together. diStefano also spoke with Dante de Tablan from Benjamin Franklin High School’s community center.

Filbert Street Community Garden — Jason Reed met with diStefano to discuss future collaboration possibilities with Filbert Street Community Garden and Living Classrooms. diStefano met up with Steve Bradley and he took her to meet the new managers of the garden.

Rodette (left), Filbert Street Garden Manager, meets Kathie (right) in December 2014

A week-long radio series on the Marc Steiner show looking at the Brooklyn-Curtis Bay / Sparrows Point area of Baltimore aired in May 2014 on WEAA FM. You can listen to the archived series here:

www.steinershow.org/tag/stories-of-deindustrialized-baltimore

Series was done in conjunction with students from the Post-industrial Places Project (PIPP) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The series focuses on individuals directly affected by the deindustrialization. It includes a segment on the Filbert Street Garden: a discussion with Chanan Delivuk, Baltimore artist and graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts program in Imaging and Digital Arts at UMBC, who grew up in Curtis Bay and currently has a plot in the community garden; Gary Brown, Benjamin Franklin High School junior who is manager of the TriVeggie Food Market program, a mobile farmer’s market, at the Filbert Street Community Garden; and Stephanie Garcia, Americorps intern with the Filbert Street Community Garden.