Botanic Bonanza: Poems Bloom in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
On a warm spring day several weeks ago a group of students from Prospect Heights High School Campus could be seen ambling through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Led by poet and Brooklyn College adjunct professor Matthew Burgess, the students were not playing hooky, they were getting inspired! Twice a week Burgess leads a writing workshop with Prospect Heights students as part of the BCCP’s after-school program. All semester long students have been honing their writing skills and workshoping poems. Writing great poems requires practice, but some days, as these poets learned, it’s nice to be outside, explore nature, and create.
The arts enrich all of the BCCP’s programs. There are artists working at each site in fields as diverse as digital video, fashion, culinary arts, radio, web, and game design. Brooklyn College Art Lab (BCAL) is located at Brooklyn College and is the hub of the arts network with three full-time artists and workshops Monday through Thursdays and Saturdays. The goal is to provide students with new vehicles for self-expression; connections to students from different high schools via the arts; and artists who serve as models for future careers in arts and technology.
