Fourth-grade students at Brown Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District are among those from six area schools participating in the Red Thread Project® this spring.
The Red Thread Project® is community art made by the community for the community. Between now and May, hundreds of people in the metropolitan area will knit and crochet hats, affix these hats to a one-half mile long red thread, perform a simple dance with the hats and finally, donate them to a local charity. The project takes its name from a Chinese legend that says an invisible red thread links people who will meet.
In February, the project’s originator, Lindsay Obermeyer, a Chicago artist, visited Linda Goedeker’s art classes at Brown and shared the story of how she began the project. She gave the students looms, hooks and yarn, which they used to weave knit hats. This month, Chinyere Oteh, a teaching artist from Springboard to Learning, gave one-hour workshops with the students, teaching them about different ways to document, through journals and photographs, their Red Thread experiences.
“The kids have really taken to this,” said Goedeker. “They have done one hat to give away and now they want one of their own.”
During Oteh’s workshop, the students learned about how to express their thoughts through pictures and words. Oteh showed them different photographs from National Geographic issues to give them ideas and she asked the children to explain what they saw. She split them into two groups and recommended students take photos of their hats in stages – someone who just started, someone who was part-way finished, someone almost done and a student who finished.
Oteh passed out half-sheets of paper for students to explain the project and how it feels when they give a hat to someone else. She asked them to use sensory writing – describing how their hat looks, feels, smells, sounds and even “tastes” – to create a senses poem. As a culminating activity, the students took photos of their hats and each other with small digital cameras. Oteh told the students to consider different poses and expressions while taking pictures. All of the student photos and poems will be attached to bulletin boards for display during later phases of the project.
“The Read Thread is a long piece of thread with all the hats connected on it and in May, all the elementary schools meet up and dance with the hats on,” wrote Micah Woods. “When I knit a hat to give to someone else, it makes me feel good because I’m helping someone in need of a hat.”
Woods wrote that his hat looks like a blue rose, feels like a soft daisy, sounds like the soft ocean, smells like a bad, blue rock and tastes like blue clouds.
“When I knit a hat to give to someone else, it makes me feel happy and relaxed,” wrote Takara Johnson. “It feels good to give to the unfortunate.”
She wrote that her hat looks purple, feels like clouds, sounds like nothing, smells like soda and tastes like purple gum.
Classmate Breonna Gregory wrote that giving a hat to someone else makes her feel “happy inside. I get to help people who are in need and people who are struggling in cold.”
She wrote her hat looks like purple flowers, feels soft like fur, sounds like quiet, little flowers, and smells like a store and tastes like grapes.
On April 8, a teaching artist and dancer will provide a one-hour basic workshop to teach the students the steps for the Dance of Hats. On April 16, students and families will be invited to attend Family Day at Laumeier Sculpture Park in Sunset Hills, where storytellers will perform, students can bring their looms to work on hats and families can add to the Red Thread’s construction.
On April 20, the Red Thread will arrive at Brown, where students will help connect hats to the thread and invite parents and volunteers to assist. The entire project lasts until mid-May, said Goedeker, when the Dance of the Hats will take place at Laumeier.
“It’s a great connection for the kids. They get to pick an organization to send their hats to,” Goedeker said.
After the Dance of the Hats, the created hats will be washed and donated to a homeless shelter, a children’s hospital cancer unit or a nursing facility, etc., depending on what the classes decide to do. Hats range in color from pink, red, yellow, light green, blue, purple to black.
For more information, please visit www.theredthreadproject.com