A fold-out postcard from Thorncliffe and Leaside

Hi Adele,
Because of what you said last time I saw you, I am thinking about how to connect my Leaside school with the nearby but immensely different and more colourful world of Thorncliffe. Some pictures from the two worlds:

Thorncliffe

Here is a warmup exercise we created, sharing what we are grateful for. I love this even though it was a casual 10-minute piece. Later we painted flowing silk banners with imagery expressing gratitude and thanksgiving in a mixture of Bangladeshi fabric motifs, Urdu, Tagalog, Arabic and English lettering.

Manzu and I papier-macheing a prop tree.

Here is the Festival of Story group, ready to perform their personal stories . They are all so elegant! Behind us, see the tree under which everyone told their stories and performed.

Here is artwork by the participants, relating their personal stories in visual form.

Here I am building an embroidery table for the kindergarten students at my school.
(Beyond me is my dad's piano body which he is using as a vibrating amp to play back music generated by his aeolian harp. Did I ever mention that he is an artist/scientist, and high tech inventor?)

Leaside:

Here are the students embroidering. They love this activity and the table is always set up in a classroom these days. There are four year olds in that group who figured out on their own how to create sophisticated patterns. I wish I could show their lovely faces too, but not online.

This postcard is the beginning of a thought which you catalyzed in our last conversation. How to bring these two worlds together? While Leaside has the money, Thorncliffe has the cultural wealth.