Prairie Sea Projects is happy to announce the 4th year of the Switchgrass Teen Film Workshop taking place in Yuma County this summer July 26 – 28; free for middle and high school students. Erin Harper, professional film maker from Yuma, returns with Erin Greenwell, also a professional filmmaker and professor, to lead local students in a workshop at Fox Ranch Preserve (straight south of Eckley on Road U). Fox Ranch, owned by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), is a 14,000-acre jewel within Colorado’s shortgrass prairie ecoregion. It’s a meeting place for species from the eastern and western United States, including 170 species of birds, many of which find themselves at the farthest extent of their ranges. The Arickaree river flows through the preserve and is Colorado’s last example of an intact and relatively free-flowing plains river. Coaxed from deep underground aquifers, it is narrow, shallow, and slow-moving. Rare fish and amphibians, like the brassy minnow, orange-throated darter and the plains leopard frog, reside in the river. TNC manages the ranch for both conservation and agricultural values and it serves as a world class site for prairie research. They maintain a cattle-grazing lease on the property with producers who steward the land and implement grazing management plans compatible with TNC’s conservation goals. Fox Ranch has become a critical property for showcasing how agriculture and conservation values can be simultaneously prioritized to achieve climate resiliency.
Students, inspired by the local landscape, will create short films from concept to completion in three days. A community screening will take place at the ranch on Monday, July 28th at 5:30 for anyone who would like to join; 12572 County Road U, Kirk, CO.
The Switchgrass Film Lab is just one of Prairie Sea Project’s creative residencies hosted at Fox Ranch this summer. In June, Jacob Job, Communications Director, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, visited Fox Ranch and using state-of-the-art equipment, captured the Prairie’s soundscape that brings the fauna diversity of the high plains to life. You can hear Jacob’s recordings on the Prairie Sea Projects Soundcloud site: https://soundcloud.com/prairie-sea-projects. At this site you can also listen to oral story collections, Where We Live and Walk and Talks, collected from Yuma County residents on topics about connections to land and place.
In July Fox Ranch hosted Beau Farris, selected as the 3rd annual SunLit Writer in Residence, a Prairie Sea Projects partnership with CO Sun newspaper. In September Nhatt Nichols, graphic poet, will return for deeper story collecting and landscape connection. Prairie Sea Projects just released a new book featuring Nhatt’s illustrations: Walking Constellations, A Prairie Oral History Comic. Stay tuned to see some of these illustrations in your local newspaper.
Up and coming events with Prairie Sea Projects and Fox Ranch will be an artist talk and potluck dinner with Nhatt Nichols, Saturday, September 13 from 5-7pm, and a community celebration with Yuma County Economic Development will take place Saturday, October 11 from 2 – 5. We hope to see you at the ranch!
To find out more about Prairie Sea Projects please visit our website; www.prairieseaprojects.org.