Current Class
Schedule & Registration
Here are the schedule and descriptions of current classes, workshops, and conversations at Let’s Learn! this semester. Each description includes a registration link.
Hope to see you in class!
Class Schedule
Spring 2025
Angelo Miramonti
Friday, February 7, 6.30 pm to 8 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
In this workshop you will learn how to use poetry as a way to connect with strangers and create something beautiful and meaningful together.
Born on the streets of Lima some two decades ago, the “Live Poetry” movement is spreading across the globe. Developed by Peruvian poet and community organizer Luis Enrique Amaya, Live Poetry consists of two phases. In the first phase, the poet interviews a passer-by on the street and asks them to talk about someone important to her or him (a family member, a friend, a lover). In the second phase, the poet asks the interviewee to wait for a few minutes. Then the poet sits alone for about ten minutes and composes a poem dedicated to the person chosen by the interviewee. When he has finished, the poet gives the poem to the interviewee as a gift saying: “After listening to you, I composed this poem, and I give it to you as a gift. But beware: it is not for you. It is to invite you to give it as a gift to the person you told me about.”
In this workshop, Angelo Miramonti, a Professor of Community Theatre at the Fine Arts University in Cali (Colombia), leads us in a workshop to create our own Live Poetry and shares his experiences in bringing Live Poetry to Colombia and Italy.
Mohamed Waseem
Saturday, February 15, 12:00 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
A conversation between Mohammed Waseem, founder and director of the Interactive Resource Center based in Lahore, Pakistan and Dan Friedman, artistic director emeritus of the Castillo Theatre in New York City. In 2000, Waseem, already a veteran of political street theatre, began traveling from village to village in the Pakistani countryside organizing local people, mostly peasants, into theatre troupes—250 of them over the next ten years. “I start with non-actors,” says Waseem. “Never did I audition anyone. … I believe that If you are human, you can perform. Whatever the forms, the knowledge and the skills the community has, we work with that.” His work has subsequently expanded into citizen journalism, video, and television. This is a rare opportunity to learn directly from a global pioneer of performance activism.
Caroline Donnola
Saturday, March 1, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
Whether you’ve been writing poetry all your life or have never done so, poetry is a form of expression that anyone can participate in. In this workshop—led by Caroline Donnola, who has taught writing classes for decades in business colleges, high schools, and continuing education programs—we’ll explore some of the elements that can be used to bring poetry to life; play with the sounds and rhythms of poetry; and do some in-class writing. Using writing prompts, each student will create a short poem in class. Together we’ll discover how poetry writing can help us unleash new kinds of thoughts and feelings and free us up from the constraints that can hold us back from creatively expressing and experiencing our lives in new ways.
Omar H. Ali
Thursday, March 20, 2:00 pm to 3:15 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
Africa has been vital in the development of science since the ancient world. From the advent of agriculture along the banks of the Nile to ironmaking in West Africa, to innovations in medicine, mathematics, and engineering across the continent, Africa has been essential in the development of science, globally, as the systematic process of observing, asking questions, forming hypotheses, testing, and predicting—the scientific method—goes back to antiquity. African knowledge-generation and methodological advances propelled science, globally. What is the documentary evidence? What does the archeological record reveal? Is there a continuity in the development of science across the world? And, just as ‘Africa’ is a social construct that emerges out of historical power relationships, so is ‘science.’ So what do we mean by science (a term only used, starting in the 1830s) and what is its history?
Omar H. Ali is Dean of Lloyd International Honors College, Professor of Comparative African Diaspora History and a Research Associate in the Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Zinia Rahman
Sunday, April 13, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
A playful introduction to Arabic as a language and a culture with Zinia Rahman, a librarian and Arabic teacher with the New York Public Library. Learn how to approach the Arabic alphabet, its vowels and sounds, practice writing the flowing Arabic letters and saying greetings. No previous experience with Arabic is required. Bring a pen and paper!
Allen Cox and Dan Belmont
Saturday, April 26, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
This will be a look at—and a listen to—the role of African American music has played in embodying and inspiring the ongoing struggle for freedom and full equality in the U.S.A. The session will be a mix of music video clips (Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder, among others) and informal conversation led by progressive musician and composer Dan Belmont and life-long grassroots organizer and leader Allen Cox.
Mary Fridley
Saturday, May 3, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm, Eastern U.S. Time (time zone converter)
Regardless of age, health or life circumstance, everyone has a relationship to dementia. Maybe we have a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a colleague or a neighbor who is living with dementia or cognitive decline. Maybe we’re worried that we’ll be diagnosed one day. Or maybe we ignore it all together because it’ll never “happen to us.” All of which is understandable, since the traditional view of dementia is overwhelmingly (and unnecessarily) negative and tragic.
But what if this didn’t have to be the case? What if we can come together to create new and more positive ways to embrace dementia? Or be more open and yes, even joyful, in sharing and building with our emotionality, uncertainty and fear? Or relate to diagnosis, not as the end of life but the beginning of opportunity and growth?
If you’re interested in playfully and improvisationally, exploring these and other questions, join us at The Joy of Dementia (You Gotta Be Kidding!), led by Mary Fridley, who also coordinates Reimaging Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice.