Growing Stories in our Community: Unity in Diversity

On September 10, The Mosaic Film Experience team had the opportunity to partner with Living Arts to host a workshop for students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.Living Arts is an interdisciplinary residential community in Bursley Hall on the universities’ North Campus that brings together 80 undergraduates in the arts, architecture, engineering and other fields to explore innovation, creativity, and collaboration.Each month, Living Arts puts together a workshop led by distinguished faculty or working professionals to encourage the pursuit of creative, new ideas. We were honored to have the opportunity to lead September’s workshop.Living Arts strives to educate students about the importance of conveying their creative process and creative journey in a clear, concise and coherent manner. Our workshop activity was a group challenge to create a 1- to 2-minute video about unity in diversity. The Mosaic team facilitated discussions about the importance of individual and collective awareness of stories related to diversity on campus and how personal stories can collectively bring unity among students. After the discussion, students broke off into groups to create videos based on their interpretation of the topic.After a couple hours of collaboration, we regrouped to view the student’s presentations and videos. Each group took a different approach, but all were able to clearly define the topic in their films, which is the beauty of art and filmmaking.We want to thank our 25 student volunteers for being peer mentors and helping workshop attendees shoot and edit their videos.  We had a wonderful time interacting with more than 100 bright minds at this event and we look forward to the opportunity to partner with Living Arts and the University of Michigan again in the future!