2022 marked Year One in our work with the Studio 678 program. The mission of the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery focuses on education, and we are committed to supporting programs involving City School District children and urban education in general.
FOMH members who worked on this collaboration were Margaret Miyake, Chris Grooms, and Pat Corcoran.
Studio 678 Photography & Writing Program
Now in its 24th consecutive year as a 24-session after-school program for students in 6th, 7th and 8th grades from the Rochester City School District, the Studio 678 program is free to the students because of the generosity of many funders.
The six goals of photo club are to:
- Empower youth to express their vision and voice through photography and writing.
- Enable youth to build life skills such as self-confidence, perseverance, and problem-solving.
- Encourage youth to connect with the community via field trips to historical, cultural, college, urban/rural and other settings.
- Enhance knowledge of core school subjects such as ratios when mixing chemistry or use of fractions when cutting mats.
- Energize youth to work together in teams.
- Establish mentoring relationships with youth, over a 1 to 3 year period.
Students learn how to use a professional 35mm film camera, go on field trips in the community to take pictures, make their own black & white prints in the darkroom, write poems or stories to accompany their photographs and create their own pages for the annual club book.
The culmination of the 2022 season was an awards ceremony held in the Council Chamber of the City Hall followed by a festive party for the students and their families.
The winning photograph from the Mount Hope Cemetery competition was Sanaa Kettles. Our congratulations to Sanaa and all the Mount Hope Cemetery photographers!
FLOWER GRAVE
Have you ever seen flowers grow on top of a grave?
Usually you would see flowers being brought to a grave.
But there is one special grave
That grows flowers by itself.
It might have grown by itself,
Or maybe someone planted them on top of it.
But as far as we all know
The flowers are just there.
Whomever grave it is must be very special
To have flowers growing,
Cause when we usually go to graveyards,
They don’t have flowers growing on them.
SANAA KETTLES