It doesn’t always take knowledge of a specific language to start a global discussion. Understanding can happen with the exchange of something as simple and universally understood as a smile. Or as complex and personal as art.
Students participating in the first Central Coast Momentus International project may have started with a smile, but ultimately found using the arts could help them communicate across cultures.
Youths aged 13 to 18 recently met for several days, with local artists as mentors, to create ways to communicate through art. One segment of the project involved making a film about their culture to exchange with students in Nicaragua, who will in turn send back their own films. To get the community involved on a local level, the group also started a flag of intention, now on display at Linnaea’s Café in SLO, along with works that relate to the project by artist Pacha and Santa Maria photographer Enrique Esguerra. The goal is to get the community to create and add their own piece to the flag and see how far they can get it to stretch.
The entire process has been recorded and will be turned into a documentary.
Nipomo resident Anya Kandel started the first project that would evolve into Momentus International in Ghana two years ago. She realized that cross-cultural communication and art both have more applications that go beyond traditional use.
“[In the project], film and art is used as a tool and as a means to connect with people rather than a way to exhibit,” Kandel said. “It’s interaction versus making a film that is going to be watched and responded to.”
She realized the possibility of communication through art when she was studying abroad and noticed that not only are the people of Ghana seen in a specific way by the outside world, but there’s also a specific way they want to be seen.
While living in Ghana for a year, Kandel participated in a project on storytelling, for which she sat in a compound with elderly women who peeled yams and told stories while goats ran around.
“The best way to understand someone is to hear their story. It becomes a way to understand the culture,” Kandel explained—but it’s not the story she’s interested in; it’s the process of expression, whether storytelling, dance, poetry, or painting.
In the process of telling their stories to send to Nicaragua, the local students first took notice of just how different their own Central Coast group was, Kandel said, citing that one person lives in Nipomo, another in Santa Maria, and another in San Luis Obispo. One person comes from Hawaii. One believes in God, one doesn’t.
Student Julie Montes said recognizing those differences helped her grow.
“The greatest thing I learned was communicating with my peers,” she said. “Many of them I wouldn’t have talked to before, but they really helped me with putting forward my thoughts.”
The students were ultimately able to get a perspective on how vast differences can be—and how close to home.
Kandel later learned that the students spent hours meeting on their own time talking about “how they were going to change the world.”
“It’s really exciting to see how this spark was created among these 14 young people,” she said.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone speaks to her coworkers through dance. Send comments to scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2009.
