826LA
826LA is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills and helping teachers inspire their students to write. Programs are structured around the beliefs that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. There are two locations: 826LA West in Venice and 826LA East in Echo Park.
The 826LA Board of Directors consists of Miguel Arteta, Mac Barnett, Joshuah Bearman, Nínive Clements Calegari, Dave Eggers, Jodie Evans, John T. Gilbertson, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, Keith Knight, Melissa Mathison, Salvador Plascencia, and Sally Willcox.
There are 6 other 826 National chapters; San Francisco (826 Valencia), NYC (826NYC), Seattle (826 Seattle), Chicago (826CHI), Ann Arbor (826 Michigan), and Boston (826 Boston).
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[edit] Echo Park Time Travel Mart
826LA East resides in a Victorian salon nestled behind the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, a convenience store specializing in products imported from the past and future, such as Viking odorant, robot milk, mammoth chunks and Ricky Martin lunch boxes. The store and its initial line of products were conceived by writers Mac Barnett and Jon Korn, and graphic designer Stefan G. Bucher. The store also sells anthologies of work by 826LA writing students, new and back issues of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Wholphin and other McSweeney's publications. The store also sells a special series of Poketo wallets, celebrating the work of artists and students alike. The short stories written by 826LA students line the inside of Poketo's artist wallets, and then illustrated with a Poketo artists' interpretations of the stories [1].
[edit] Programs
Drop-in Tutoring: 826LA offers free drop-in tutoring Monday through Thursday, from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tutoring is offered with a focus on personalized instruction, offering local students individualized help with their homework. Students come to the writing labs, where they work with tutors to complete their daily assignments, and often to embark on ambitious writing projects: poems, stories, comic books, and self-initiated research. Dogtown Books, an in-house publishing outfit, regularly publish these creative works.
Workshops: 826LA offers writing workshops that cover a wide spectrum of subjects, all designed to strengthen students’ skills, foster their creativity, and give them an opportunity to execute projects that showcase their work. Working professionals teach all the offered workshops, and class sizes are kept small to ensure individualized attention. These workshops focus on a variety of topics. Recent classes have covered crafting college-application essays, designing imaginary countries, preparing for the SAT, reviewing runway fashion, and writing love poetry from the perspective of leopards.
Among its many collaborative workshops is Sunday Afternoon For Kids, held at the Hammer Museum in which artists, writers and performers teach their craft [2].
In School Support for Teachers: 826LA also sends volunteers into school throughout Los Angeles. Tutors support Los Angeles teachers in their classrooms, providing students with one-on-one attention and feedback as they work on various writing assignments: sonnets, biographies, University of California application essays, and more. In Spring 2006, Community Photoworks was created, an annual collaboration between 826LA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Seventh-graders students were taught the basics of photographic composition, explored Los Angeles with cameras, and wrote and polished artist statements. Their photographs and statements were displayed in a gallery exhibition in Venice [3].
Field Trips: In the mornings, classes from around Los Angeles visit the 826LA writing labs to participate in engaging and spirited field trips. Teachers can choose from various field-trip plans, such as workshops in screenwriting and journalism, or request a custom-designed program. Field trips are tailored to complement any teacher’s curriculum.
The most popular field trip is Storytelling & Bookmaking, in which classes collaborate to write stories for Mr. Barnacle, the never-seen, always-cranky publisher behind Barnacle & Barnacle Books. With the help of a storyteller, illustrator, and typist, a class works together to create characters, a setting, and a plot for an original story. (A recent book chronicled the friendship between an injured mouse and a sandwich-making robot policeman.) The action builds to a thrilling cliffhanger, and then each student has an opportunity to write an ending, create an illustration, bind his or her book, and walk away with the finished product. Barnacle is notoriously hard to please, but our students’ work manages to earn his enthusiastic approval every time.
[edit] Events
In August 2008, 826LA hosted the Echo Park Lake Paddle Boat Regatta.
In the past few months, 826LA has been proud to present a series of Dead Author Readings, in which such deceased wordsmiths as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe have read from their works and answered questions from the audience.
Beginning in January 2009, 826LA will produce Tiny Vaudeville, a monthly series of live performances and good times at the Echoplex.
