with DR. MARC SILVERBERG

Get ready for a crash course in contemporary a cappella. Students in this class will gain a complete overview of contemporary a cappella and its four avenues of music making: Performance, composition, recording, and education.

This class will delight even the most dedicated a cappella student by giving every student the fundamental tools and resources to create an a cappella group, record their own album, write their own arrangements, and most importantly, understand the deep sub-culture that lies within.

Each section of the class will introduce a different aspect of contemporary a cappella. While no section will make you an expert, students will at least be given a clear direction on how to start and where to go from here. Topics include: arranging, recording, directing, improvisation, history, and performing in a group.

This class is open to all skill levels, but a basic knowledge of music theory and sight reading ability are recommended.

with BEN LONG

Learn how to craft pictures using the latest AI imaging tools – and create an illustrated storybook – in this fun workshop that will teach you all of the ins-and-outs of Stable Diffusion, one of the leading AI image generators. Each student will bring a written story to this course and, over the course of the weekend, will use Stable Diffusion to create enough images to illustrate that story. Then we’ll color correct the images and lay them out, alongside the text, into a finished, printed book. Along the way you will cast your fellow students as the characters of your story, then you’ll learn how to shoot photos of those actors and train the AI so that it can consistently render images that include them. You will also learn how to direct Stable Diffusion to give you what you want as you dive into learning prompt engineering, in-painting, outpainting, img2img, embeddings, prompt libraries, ControlNet, OpenPose, LORA, DreamBooth, and much much more. No experience required, because that’s the weird AI-driven future we now live in!

All skill levels welcome.

with CYNTHEA LIU

Writing for Children and Teens is a ten-step course that addresses the nitty-gritty details of the business and covers core principles for picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and young adult novels, including: how to stress-test your book ideas for the marketplace for any format, common writing issues to avoid and possible solutions, and submission strategies for writers for have a lot or little to no experience. This workshop will also explore resources, tools, and organizations that every children’s and teen book writer should know, how to write and revise manuscripts, and much, much more.

All skill levels welcome.

with JOEL NAKAMURA

Randomness as a creative concept is much like dreaming, where subjects, symbols, archetypes, and memories merge together. Randomness can become a source of new ideas and access to our subconscious mind. In our quest to be more creative, randomness gives us a place to start without expectations or pressure. In this workshop, we will create visual narratives from random images, patterns, and happenstance. This workshop is designed for the participants to be able to bring some new ideas back to their classes. We will be working with unusual materials and ideas resulting in unexpected results.

All skill levels welcome.