Workshops
Workshops > Peru
Quechua girl weaving in Huilloc, Peru 2004

An ancient Incan community in the 21st century
Travel to Peru as a BRIDGE’S mentor! You’ll work with the students of Colegio Pukllasunchis to create a unique portrait of an indigenous community in transition. In this workshop we will use photography, digital storytelling, and the internet to create an online, interactive virtual community. Our goal is to bring the lives of Peruvian youth into classrooms around the world.

Push your Creative Boundaries
Do you need to be a technical wizard to join this workshop? Absolutely not. But you will finally have an excuse to use the stitch, panorama and movie modes on your digital camera. Those are the tools we will use to build a virtual environment composed of photographs of the landscape, architecture, people, festivals and everyday life in Cusco.

A Cross Cultural Collaboration
This is a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with the youth of Cusco and the surrounding area, while learning from and with them. From basic digital image capture to advanced techniques for managing digital work flow – whatever their skill level, participants will be challenged to take their work to the next level. Our creative collaboration with the students will culminate in a presentation/exhibit at the Museo de Martin Chambi, Peru’s preeminent indigenous photographer of the 20th century.

We'll be based in the San Blas neighborhood of Cusco, where artists and musicians have maintained a reverence for local culture. We will stay just 50 feet (vertical feet) from the conference rooms and radio station of the Asociacion Pukllasunchis, in the Casa de Campo, www.hotelcasadecampo.com.

The workshop will begin just four days after Cusco’s Inti Raymi Festival, June 24th. This festival is in honor of the Sun God, founder of Cusco and the most spectacular of Peru’s fiestas. If brushing up on your Spanish is desirable prior to the workshop, Pukllasuchis also offers Spanish classes and will accommodate Bridges workshop participants with special vocabularies helpful for communicating around digital story making. www.linguacusco.com.

We will take a guided hike through a local bioreserve where Pukllasunchis students are learning about indigenous plants, their ancient uses and the preservation of habitat. We will roam the sacred grounds of Sacsayhuaman, the “Satisfied Falcon”. In these planned and other unexpected locations, we will find the stories that Bridges students want to tell.

Bring Your Family
Our workshop is designed for families with youth from 10 to 18. This is a unique opportunity for teenagers to meet and work with their Peruvian counterparts. As the most technically adept members of our workshop, the teens will play a key role in teaching our students computer skills. In return, the Peruvian students will share a way of life that is rich in tradition and unencumbered by most of the modern necessities that Westerners take for granted.

Instructors:
Tania Westby, photographer and long time Bridges staff member, and Jennifer Geist, Bridges classroom coordinator and long time Spanish teacher will join Bridges' Executive Director Greg Tuke in facilitating this workshop.