In the last two weeks, we’ve imagined new worlds, crafted stories, learned 3D modeling, coded games, studied astrology, and wrote fan fic (and that’s not even all!)—scroll down to catch some of the highlights.

First, Octavia Project co-founder and author, Chana Porter, came back to lead us in a world-building workshop. We made emergent maps of imaginary cities and then brought those worlds to life through a guided writing exercise.

Former Octavia Project Lead Teacher, writer, educator, and astrologer Deria Matthews joined us all the way from Ghana to led an astrology workshop that explored how we deal with change on a personal level and how we as individuals can help to shape societal change.

Guest teacher and architect Aviva Rubin led an architecture workshop in which we used the online modeling tool SketchUp to design a building from the cities of our emergent maps.

We’ve also been learning to code and using it to turn our branching narrative stories into online games. Octavia Project alum Nia is back this summer as our Teaching Assistant, and she led us in a writing exercise to draw out our main characters’ central conflicts.

The summer is flying by, and we have just one week left!  On Thursday, 8/6, we’ll be celebrating the culmination of this summer’s program with our Virtual Showcase–we hope you can join us!