RDT’S Green Map® Project for Salt Lake County
CREATING PATHS OF INQUIRY, EXPLORATION, & EXPRESSION
INVESTING IN A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
COMMUNITY BUILDING

Green Map Exerpts from RDT on Vimeo.

For more information about the Green Map® System, visit www.greenmap.org

Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) is committed to finding ways to engage audiences with activities inspired by literature, poetry, music, visual arts, environment, “place” and socially relevant issues that serve to train and ignite the creative voice in people of all ages.

RDT Green Map® Arts/Environmental Residency Program: There is a growing need to help young people understand the concept of environmental sustainability and become involved in the life and health of their communities. RDT has created a unique Arts/Environmental Education Residency Program for schools based on the Green Map® System, a global movement encouraging communities to take inventory of sustainability practices. Through “place-based” education, inter-disciplinary activities and the arts, RDT will utilize the Green Map ® System tools to actively engage 30,000 young people in the life of their communities and inspire a dynamic understanding of “place.”

Green Mapping has been adopted in over 600 cities world wide and helps individuals understand their community through the literal use of a map that will be created by students using beautifully designed Green Map icons © to identify places such as nature preserves and cultural centers, history, geography, environmental justice and activism, green enterprise and efforts to improve the environment. The RDT Green Map Residency will create paths and techniques of inquiry, exploration and expression while inspiring young people to be thoughtful and productive citizens. (www: greenmap.org)

“Solutions to many of our ecological problems lie in an approach that celebrates, empowers, and nurtures the cultural, artistic, historical and spiritual resources of each local community and champions their ability to bring those resources to bear on the healing of nature and community.” (David Sobel)

The RDT Green Map Project consists of three concurrent inter-related activities:

1. The creation of a Green Map of Salt Lake County (digital and printed)
2. Arts and Environmental Education outreach activities including lectures, movement classes, teacher workshops, demonstrations for teachers and students.
3. Performance events for schools and the community.
   

RDT will invite 60 schools K-12 to become engaged in the mapping of 16 cities in Salt Lake County to identify sustainable living. Under the guidance of the RDT Green Map Steering Committee, led by Linda Smith RDT Executive / Artistic Director and Ivan Weber, sustainability consultant, RDT dancers, community volunteers, and leaders in the environmental education community will assist students and teachers in developing a Green Map inventory of Salt Lake County as a pathway to develop life-long learning skills. The process enhanced by a movement language inspired by the Green Map icons® will celebrate environmental progress and help identify concerns. It will anchor our community’s strengths, assets and challenges on an enduring, dynamic map of our own landscape and celebrate this map in art, neighborhood by neighborhood, school by school. The process leads to the creation of a new paradigm in environmental education, a model program to be replicated in communities nation-wide.

WHY A DANCE COMPANY?

RDT is uniquely qualified to champion this “first of its kind” Green Map-dance project. Nationally recognized for its commitment to arts-in-education since 1966, RDT’s “award winning” movement classes, workshops and performances have provided ways for individuals to become complex thinkers and problem solvers, effective communicators, cooperative group participants and leaders. The language of Movement is a powerful communication tool. RDT can help students experience and interpret the world directly through movement to open avenues of awareness that will increase self-worth, develop self-confidence, encourage understanding and consideration for others, and provide opportunities to create and to explore. RDT’s dance activities can help students validate who they are and how they relate to the life of the community and the world at large. Students with a rich background in the arts are more likely to become contributors to the community, quality workers and producers, and self-directed learners.

DANCING THE GREEN MAP

RDT will use the Green Map icons to inspire the creation of a movement language and give an artistic identity to the symbols that surface from the research gathered by students as they become more aware of established and potential green enterprises in their surroundings. This information will ultimately be the inspiration for a theatrical dance production in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in 2011 utilizing the Green Map information gathered by students including essays, multi-media, and movement material relating to the mapped sites as a celebration of “place.”

GOALS

The Green Map Process will:

• Create a map that can be a useful tool for eco-tourism, education, neighborhood re-vitalization.
• Create a new “integrated” arts-in-education residency that can be replicated in communities throughout the nation.
• Inspire community action and partnerships with diverse community groups and organizations in order to empower participants with understanding of their environment, economy, history, culture and trends.
• Recruit schools, neighborhood groups, community councils, municipal governments, environmental and social organizations, and agencies of state and federal governments to participate in the Green Map synthesis, to construct a dynamic mirror to our ‘place.’
• Celebrate environmental progress and encourage environmental responsibility.

Using the art of dance, RDT’s Green Map Project will:

• Develop greater awareness of the relationship we have with each other, with nature, and with the world community to promote human understanding, compassion and tolerance.
• Create movement language expressing Green Map ® icons to expand human inter-relatedness and communication.
• Increase knowledge about the complex inter-relation of land, plants, animals and humans, the web of life.
• Encourage sustainability by helping people make choices that produce energy efficiency, conservation, and renewable energy.
• Promote an appreciation for history while stimulating an appetite for discovery and exploration.
• Ignite the imaginations of young people while developing life-long learning skills
• Encourage students to become contributing, productive citizens by providing alternative ways of learning in order to achieve basic educational objectives such as concentrating, creative problem solving, planning, visualizing and conceptualizing.
• Create dance performances, integrating Green Map ® icon pattern vocabulary, incorporating movement, music, and other arts based on Green Map inventory.

HOW TO BECOME AN RDT GREEN MAP SCHOOL IN 2010-2011

“Place-based education is the process of using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach concepts in language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, art and other subjects across the curriculum. Emphasizing hands-on, real-world learning experiences increases academic achievement, helps students develop stronger ties to their community, enhances appreciation for the natural world, and heightens a commitment to serving as active, contributing citizens.” (David Sobel)

As a school partner you will be asked to:

• Organize a Green-Map team for your school ( teachers, students, parents, volunteers).
• Attend a Teacher Professional Development Workshop* to learn how to “map” your community.
• Meet with RDT’s Green-Map leaders to schedule residency activities.
• Survey your designated community and identify its features using Green-Map Icons.
• Create a map of your neighborhood and contribute to the creation of the Salt Lake County Green Map
  

RDT GREEN MAP RESIDENCY OUTLINE

• Professional Development Workshop: Teachers will become acquaint with the GM icons© for sustainable living, the mapmaking process, assessment procedure, goals, methods, curriculum content and lesson plans to achieve success integrating and implementing the material.
• Outreach Activities: Movement classes, RDT lecture demonstrations, arts related workshops, classes relating to the natural environment, “green” building, alternative energy development, land-use, geography and history may be scheduled.
• Displays, publications, in-school performances and site-specific events: Students will create of a portrait of their communities using dance, visual arts, photographs, videos, essays, interviews with those people affected by the area. RDT will develop student choreography inspired by the Green Map icons.
• Creation of a digital and hard copy map: RDT will compile information from the inventory to be shared on the Green Map ® international website. A digital and hard copy- map of Salt Lake County will be created to become a valuable tool serving local residents, visitors, businesses, and educators.
• Credits: Participating teacher will be eligible for State Office In-Service re-certification or university credits.

“The Green Map Project absorbs students in the realities of their surroundings, triggers curiosity about how these realities affect them, and causes them to wonder about what it means for their future health and happiness. Most wonderful of all, the Green Project gives students a powerfully authentic voice by teaching them how to express their response through dance. This communicative gift deeply imbeds understanding and memory and encourages their participation in making their corner of the world a better place.” (Carol Ann Goodson, Ph.D., State Fine Arts Specialist, Utah State Office of Education)

SUMMER WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS

In-Depth three-day workshops conducted in the summer will offer instruction on mapmaking process, the icons for sustainable living, assessment procedure, goals, methods, curriculum content and lesson plans to achieve success integrating and implementing the material.

• Dates: June 21,22,23, 2010: Elementary School Teacher Workshop
• June 24,25,26, 2010: Jr/Senior High School Teacher Workshop
• Time: 9:00 AM-3:00 PM
• Credit choice: State Office In-Service re-certification credits or University of Utah
• Where: Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 West Broadway, Salt Lake City, UT
• Contact: Lynne Larson, (801) 534-1000
• Cost: Teachers in Salt Lake County who join RDT’s Green Map initiative may attend the workshop free of charge and be eligible for a free RDT in-school Residency
  

BUILDING COMMUNITY
BECOME AN RDT GREEN MAP PROJECT SPONSOR

• Invest the development of a more sustainable and responsible community.
• Increase your commitment to preserving the natural environment, conserving resources .
• Promote responsible stewardship and “green” building
• Encourage students to become productive citizens.
• Celebrate environmental progress
• Share how you or your business is helping to make the S.L County “green.”
• Help RDT develop community building activities
• Be recognized in all RDT Green Map press releases, advertising, playbills, on the RDT website and on the hard copy Salt Lake County Green Map.

$1000 - $3,000: Sponsor an RDT school residency.
$5,000: Sponsor a Green Map Icon
$10,000: Sponsor a portion of the RDT culminating performance (choreography, media design, music)
$15,00-$25,000: Sponsor the creation of the digital or printed Green Map for S.L. County.