Drawing Our Sky
a storybook experience for children separated from their families
a cloud
an umbrella
one unforgettable journey across the sky
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The Drawn Together Project wants to create stories for children experiencing separation from their families. Drawing Our Sky was initially designed for an audience of folks impacted by mass incarceration, but the story can be enjoyed by everyone. Future titles in the Drawn Together series will be created in conversation with the foster care community, military families, and others who are navigating separation and loss.
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The Drawn Together Project: building our book
For the creation of Drawing Our Sky, a team of artists also ventured into the unknown in order to uncover a story together.
Since 2016, the talented women of the EPIC ensemble at Cook County Jail (a group composed almost entirely of mothers) has been exploring improvisation and storytelling through Piven Theatre Workshop classes. Gillian suggested that the group draw from their theatre training to collaborate on a children’s book. This book could be used as a tool for connection during their separation from their children - as a way to warm up the in-person visits between mother and child or as a meditation on connection for children who are unable to visit.
From there, the Drawn Together Project hit the ground running. The finished product stems from a summer of improvisation-inspired story development and calligraphy lessons led by Vichcraft’s Jenna Blazevich at Cook County Jail, a fall of editing the tale into a storybook, a winter of designing pages and creating additional illustrations with Book Designer, Liz Bell, and a spring of applying finishing touches.
The best part of this book? It’s still not finished.
That’s where you, the readers, come in. Each of you will take the book in a new direction by adding the drawings that are unique to you and your story.
Thank you for being the final part of this process.
EPIC Ensemble: Vanessa, Maryann, Jordan, Dreyana, Lithia, Lakeshia, Tiffany, Tierra, Alashonza, Roshinda, Britany, DeAshley, Tyronda, Robin, Deborah, Paige
Artistic Director of the Drawn Together Program: Gillian Hemme
Illustrator and Book Art Director: Liz Bell
Teaching Artists: Gillian Hemme, Bec McNamara, Abby Pierce, Linda Stevenson, Jenna Blazevich, Michael McCarty, Jes Scheinpflug, Graciela Guzman, Eleanor Russell
Thank you to:
Greg PIerce and Abby Pierce at ACTA Publications, Jenna Blazevich of Vichcraft, Rachel Hart Winter and Fr. Larry Dowling of the Acta Foundation, William Droel of NCL, Kalena Chevalier and DCASE, Kerry Wright, Lisa Cunningham, Kelly Baker, Sophia Ansari, Eleanor Russell, Erika Force, Jes Scheinpflug, Graciela Guzman, Michael D. McCarty, Evelyn Stamey, Mary Doyle, Yana Makuwa of Greywolf Press, Mary Doyle, Dan Black, Linda Stevenson, Evelyn Stamey, Kerry Wright, Lisa Cunningham, and every other gust of wind that has kept Cloud afloat in the sky.
