"Closer Look" Blog Feature and Interview with Locust Projects

In July 2020 I was featured as part of Locust Projects newest blog series “Closer Look” which revisits some of their past WaveMaker Grantees. PayeSlayers received a Cycle 4 WaveMaker Grant in 2018, and some of the interview is below. To read the full interview, click HERE.

Interview with Dana De Greff, PageSlayers Founder and Executive Director

Tell us about your WaveMaker project:PageSlayers, a 2016 Knight Arts Challenge winner, is dedicated to cultivating the next generation of artists- and writers-of-color in South Florida. We partnered with EXILE Books with Elia Khalaf to produce SIDE X SIDE in 2018, a dynamic, interactive correspondence art project that engaged with young artists and writers in Opa-Locka and Little Haiti. We aimed to bridge our respective Miami-Dade neighborhoods together by means of mail art, highlighting their unique experiences and neighborhoods. Inspired students between the ages of 8 to 10 years old living and attending public school in Little Haiti and Opa-Locka were paired with each other as pen pals, creating correspondence art – stamps, envelopes, and other snail-mail memorabilia – while learning about life in another diverse community through the lens of a new friend. These students expanded their literary horizons beyond community borders and instilled in themselves a civic sense of pride from where they read, write, live and play.

Going back to the 1960s, mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, has been used for exchanging art, collages, drawings, and the written word. We were drawn to this medium because it allows for spontaneity, creativity, and is inclusive in its nature; all you need is access to a mailbox! One of the most appealing aspects of mail art is its egalitarianism – through the postal service, students can connect and circumnavigate issues such as transportation, economic status, and lack of meeting spaces. Both the communities of Opa-Locka and Little Haiti are predominately communities of color and immigrants, and both have strong ties to literature and art, which is why we thought they would be an excellent pairing. These two areas have also been in the process of major cultural, economical, and artistic revivals since the fifties and sixties.

We began our pilot program working with PageSlayers Summer Camp, which was part of the Opa Locka Community Development Corporation overall summer camp programs, with a group of about 15 students, and another group of about 15 students in Little Haiti through Gang Alternative, Inc. Over the course of about 6 weeks, we met with each group multiple times, leading workshops on letter writing, stamp making, and more to create a unique pen pal project. EXILE provided basic templates/graphic design and guidelines that will help to spark dialogue and generate collaborative content between students in Opa-Locka and Little Haiti, which included special envelopes, paper designs, and writing prompts about what makes the students neighborhood’s unique.