The first time she went to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, C.C. Gould was 16 and played trumpet in the Pittsburg High School band.
“Little did I dream then that I’d be driving a bus for the Kennedy Center,” said Gould, tour coordinator for the “On Location: Spotlight on Your Community” project.
“We drive a 45-foot bus around the country and teach children how to make documentary films based on artists in their community,” she said.
The tour, which began in January and will end in June, is scheduled to visit 10 schools across the country, chosen through a competitive application process. It is currently at Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School, Joplin, Mo.
“Joplin is just too close not to come over to Pittsburg,” said Gould, daughter of Mary Robinson, a USD 250 elementary art teacher..
So Gould and the bus visited Tuesday at Westside Elementary School. Students toured the bus, saw a short film and asked questions.
“No, we don’t sleep on the bus,” Gould replied to one youngster. “The Kennedy Center is very nice to us and we get to stay in hotels. We couldn’t live on the bus because it doesn’t have a bathroom.”
But it has a lot of other things. The Kennedy Center partnered with Daimler Financial Services for the project, and the Thomas Built Bus, part of the Daimler family of transportation, was outfitted as a media studio on wheels.
The bus also has its own power generator, which came in very handy last week when electricity was off in part of Joplin.
Fred Andrew, USD 250 school bus transportation director, was very impressed with the vehicle.
“I never thought they’d be able to teach school on a bus,” he said. “This is awesome.”
Also along on the tour are Shannon Huneryager, theater teaching artist, and Lauren Madow, media teaching artist.
“We spend two weeks in each town, which is a nice length of time to get to know the people and the town,” Gould said. “Each school partners with an artist in the community, and the drama artist and media artist work with students in storytelling techniques and media skills.”
Together they work to create a short video about the artist or arts group.
“Right now we’re working with the fifth through eighth-grade age group,” Gould said. “The kids come up with the questions they’re going to ask the artist in the interview, they get to be the camera operator and there is always a day of location shooting.”
Around 30 minutes of footage is shot, then edited down to three to five minutes for the finished documentary. Students do that, too.
“On this project, we’ve definitely seen how the kids are thinking differently, and using the skills they had,” Gould said.
Participating schools also receive an installed media lab including a computer, digital editing software, camera, sound recording equipment and accessories valued around $5,000.
Completed videos are uploaded to the onlocationproject.org web site maintained by the Kennedy Center to share around the world.
Gould was also a driver for the Kennedy Center last year for a national tour of a children’s show titled “Katie Couric’s ‘The Brand New Kid’.”
“I drove a 26-foot truck about 20,000 miles last year,” she said. “I figured that 20 more feet wouldn’t make much difference.”
But Gould did have to earn a commercial driver’s license to drive the vehicle.
“You have to pass three tests to get it,” she said. “There was so much ice in the Kansas City area that I had to take my driver’s test on ice. They told me I did a perfect job.”
“On Location” has visited in West Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and other states. After Joplin, Gould and her colleagues will head to Fort Worth, Texas, for their last school, then return to Washington, D.C.
“I can’t believe this is almost over,” she said. “The time just flew. I’ve been in all but nine states now.”
Gould earned a degree in lighting design from the North Carolina School of the Arts. She has used those skills to design lighting for numerous Pittsburg Community Theatre productions, as well as the 2008 Midwest Regional Ballet production of “The Nutcracker.”
Gould also worked at Pittsburg Memorial Auditorium last year and exhibited her photography in October in the Beverly J. Corcoran Gallery.
She’d love to be back “On Location” next year.
“We are definitely going to try to make this happen next year,” Gould said.
PITTSBURG —
