Welcome to the start of a new summer at the Octavia Project! We’re excited to give you a taste of all the art-making, science, writing, and community-building that’s happened in our first two weeks!

At Orientation, we created our community contract, then made our own journals and inscribed them with personal affirmations (just like Octavia Butler did)!

Our new lead teacher, Deria Matthews, led us in a mask-making exercise, and we used our masks to express our individual superpowers!

We also wrote our own plays and welcomed our first guest author–N.K. Jemisin!

t was fascinating to build camera obscuras and use them look at the summer afternoon…

And, guest artist Emmy Catedral had us make our own rebuses! Can you figure out what this one says?? (Hint: that creature in an octopus.)

We’ve worked together to create incredible things these past two weeks, and we can’t wait to see what new stories, worlds, experiments, and magic our teens will make next. Look out for another update, coming in two weeks!