The library enjoys collaborating on projects with classrooms! The examples below are some of our more developed offerings, but we also welcome new ideas. Teen Bubbler can often come out to your school, or offer a tour and a workshop at any of Madison Public Library's 9 locations. Get in touch if you'd like to start exploring ways we can work together!
The Madison Story Project is a joint digital storytelling project between Madison Public Library and Madison Children’s Museum that collects, archives, and shares contemporary youth stories from the Madison, Wisconsin area. The project allows youth to tell their stories in their own words and to make visible their contributions to our local community. Through sharing these stories with the public, the project hopes to create a dialogue between youth of different backgrounds, and between youth and adults about the experiences and issues that are important to them.
Teen Bubbler offers an excercise in telling a Personal Narrative is the first 2-day project we bring to the classroom that introduces students to the intracate fun of Stop-Motion Animation. This can then be followed up with a 3-day project to make Book Trailers - commercials for books. Book trailers are the attempt to sell somebody else's story, whereas personal narratives focus on an event or series of events from the students' own lives. Therefore the story-telling and technology can be mastered during the first project with the book trailer project building upon that base with the more difficult challenge of convincing others to read a specific book.
We think good books should have cool advertisements just like movies and that is why Bubbler animators want to help you create book trailers! This stop-motion animation project aims to expand the story-telling skills of teens in Madison, WI while marketing the books they are reading, especially titles from Read On Wisconsin, a statewide literacy program that promotes high-quality books for children and teens. Check out the showcase!
We recommend the Madison Story Project as a nice setup for learning to tell a story using the library's equipment prior to the Book Trailer project. Connect with us to see if we can schedule a collaboration!
*The Bubbler book trailer project was first supported by grants from the Madison Civics Club and the Library Services and Technology Act.
Central Library houses the Bubbler Room, which hosts a variety of workshops and participatory projects on Ground Floor and is open during all regular hours. Madison Public LIbrary's Artist-In-Residence uses a portion of the the Bubbler Room as their public studio and workshop for months at a time. You may find anything from a cheesemaking workshop, to a drop-in printmaking session, to an impromptu dance party!
Individuals: Check out the Bubbler Calendar or stop by the Bubbler Room for a true Madison experience if you're in the downtown area! You may run into our Artist-In-Residence or find the perfect hand-on project just waiting for you!
Groups: Connect with us to see if we can schedule a group workshop with the Artist-In-Residence.