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SPEAKERS BUREAU
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Marc Joel Levitt
The Charles Fortes Museum School and Site Specific Education
In this talk, Mr. Levitt discusses the Charles Fortes Museum Project in the Elmwood section of Providence, where student curiosity about their 150-year-old factory building and historic neighborhood stimulates research and with the help of artists, high-quality, "real-world" presentation. In this lecture with slides, Mr. Levitt also discusses his philosophy of Site-Specific Education, where local history and culture are woven together with research and presentation. In Rhode Island, he feels, there are many opportunities for this kind of work in schools.
Fighting Sprawl in Rhode Island
Mr. Levitt helped form a land use group in South Kingstown and his lecture discusses some of what he has learned as both an activist and scholar. Mr. Levitt discusses the origins of suburban sprawl, its social and economic ramifications, and ways to help thwart its spread. In this talk with slides, Mr. Levitt will focus primarily on the Rhode Island landscape, looking at the good and bad choices made by various communities.
Stone Walls of South County
In our era of chain link fences and concrete barriers, stone walls strike us as charming and quaint features of South County's rural landscapes. In spite of their apparent simplicity, they are monuments to a dying tradition of craftsmanship. Their builders, many of them Native American or African American, worked like sculptors, assessing the attributes of each stone and using them to create unique structures. This presentation uses slides of stone walls and their makers (Taken by the late South County photographer, Mathias Oppersdorf), along with material from recent interviews, to tell the story of a craft that has left its mark upon the land. In another related program, Mr. Levitt can show and talk about his film on the same subject; Stories in Stone.
Needs: Slide projector and screen or Powerpoint projector and screen; water
Marc Joel Levitt is a storyteller, writer, radio show host, and educator. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in Labor Relations, he taught nursery school in San Francisco and in 1980 began performing as a New Vaudevillian in Rhode Island. Mr. Levitt has a long history of radio in Rhode Island, including 10 years as the writer/director/producer of New England's only radio variety show, The New England Chowda' Hour and since 1995 as the host of the national award-winning Action Speaks at AS220. He also created and directed the Charles Fortes Elementary School Museum Project and currently travels throughout the United States and around the world as a storytelling/educational consultant. As co-creator of the South Kingstown Neighborhood Congress, he has participated in a grassroots campaign against sprawl in his community of South Kingstown.