Art & Culture Live!: Community Collaborations - All School Read & From Fiction to Film with Will Weaver
All School Read & From Fiction to Film with Will Weaver allowed the Blooming Prairie Branch Library (Blooming Prairie, MN) to host an all-school read of one of Will Weaver’s books, Defect. This was followed by a discussion with the students. In the evening, Weaver spoke at the Library about his experiences in producing a movie from a literary work of fiction.
Event Dates and Locations:
April 14, 2010 – Weaver’s visit to Blooming Prairie High School and Blooming Prairie Branch Library (Blooming Prairie, MN)
Partner Organization(s):
Blooming Prairie High School
Minnesota Humanities Commission
Partner Organization(s) Contribution/Role in the Program: The Blooming Prairie High School provided the facilities, motivation, and publicity for the talk to the students. The Minnesota Humanities Commission previously awarded $1,000 to the Blooming Prairie Branch Library which was used as a match for the honorarium.
Program Outputs: Outputs are things you can count such as attendance, number of new participants, and the number of attendees who had never been at a similar event, and so on.
The combination of the two programs plus two additional programs (detailed in outcomes) resulted in 279 attending four programs. This represents over 10% of the population of Blooming Prairie.
Measurable Outcomes may be collected by survey, anecdotal responses, post-test; End user change in Behavior, Attitude, Skills, Knowledge, Condition and/or Status
The announcement of the original program resulted in the Book Discussion group of the Library selecting a Will Weaver book and collectively choosing to attend the evening program. Also, Weaver invited a small group of high school students to dinner. The discussion focused on books and teenage social pressure. An informal event occurred when a group of World Wresting Entertainment (WWE) fans spotted Weaver’s WWE shirt. This resulted in a rush of WWE fans quizzing Weaver on his experience on a recent trip to the WWE reading challenge. In the structure response of the surveys, 93% of students agreed it was a positive experience. An even greater number indicated that they would like to have an additional author visit by another popular author.