Blog

Students Become Royalty for a Day in “If I Were King or Queen”

Last Saturday in Echo Park, longtime volunteer and 826LA Advisory Board member J. Ryan Stradal led our popular “If I Were a King or Queen” workshop, allowing our students’ dreams of creating their own nation with free healthcare, kingdom made of chocolate frosting, or country where you are considered weird if you’re not a computer nerd, to come to fruition.

Students are busy envisioning what it would be like if they were king or queen for a day at a recent workshop in Echo Park.

Students are busy envisioning what it would be like if they were king or queen for a day at a recent workshop in Echo Park.

There’s something pretty special about seeing the ways in which students craft a country of their own from scratch. The process began with the group brainstorming what we would change about our own country, which sparked the formation of worlds where rules are limited to no parents, no bedtime, and no salad, or instead of tennis shoes people wear tennis rackets on their feet. Students stood up on chairs, declaring their kingdoms into the world, with their own flags, and created (or, in most cases, annulled) laws.

Knee deep in creating detailed sketches of our respective make-believe countries, 826 National co-founder Dave Eggers paid us a surprise visit! He stayed long enough to hear from a couple of the students. One of our students told him about her country named Luna, where it is always night time and populated by coyotes who live in houses with stained-glass windows. I think he was pretty impressed.

Coming up October 19, we have a spinoff of our classic King and Queen Workshop at the Hammer Museum called “If I were a Pumpkin King and Vampire Queen” where things will get a little spookier!

— Natalie Dunn, 826LA intern in Echo Park

This entry was posted in General. Bookmark the permalink.