About
Image by Julie Gulenko, courtesy of Oberlin College Communications
The Gratitude Showers Challenge began over Winter Term 2020, in the Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) Department at Oberlin College and Conservatory. TIMARA Technical Director Abby Aresty led a small group of Oberlin College students in a group Winter Term project, Sonic Arts in Society, exploring the power of the sonic arts to create meaningful impact in our local community. The Gratitude Showers Challenge was one of several projects that the group worked on in collaboration with the University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center in Elyria, Ohio. We wanted to build a project that was specifically for the health care staff. So, we created an outreach activity focused on celebrating the incredible work that the doctors, nurses, and the support staff in the hospital community engage in every day.
Photos by Mike Crupi courtesy of Oberlin College Communications (OCC)
By Julie Gulenko courtesy of OCC
The project began as a “gratitude challenge” for the entire hospital community. The plan was to visit the hospital and invite hospital community members to share something for which they were grateful. These drops of gratitude would be cut out of vinyl and placed on clear umbrellas to shower the hospital community with gratitude in a public display on-site in a small courtyard outside of the hospital cafeteria. Solar-powered 'sun-drop' circuits created soft rain sounds whenever the sun shined down to draw attention to the exhibit. The project was to begin in the Spring Semester, with a group of students enrolled in a Sonic Arts in Society TIMARA department course supported by TIMARA teaching and research assistants and by the Bonner Center for Service Learning at Oberlin College. Before the COVID-19 crisis hit the states, the Sonic Arts in Society students were able to visit the hospital two times to collect drops of gratitude for the installation.
When the COVID-19 crisis came to Ohio, the students at Oberlin College and Conservatory were instructed to leave campus. Hospitals in the surrounding area and country closed their doors to visitors. Our original project could not proceed how we imagined or intended. However, it seems more important now than ever to find ways to support our health care workers. With so many students, in particular, kids, working from home, we thought we could re-frame the project in light of our current situation. Aresty’s research assistants worked during spring break to create new media to reimagine this project to invite kids stuck at home to share messages of gratitude to health care workers.
While we don’t know when we will be able to bring this exhibit back to the hospital, we still intend to do so when it is safe. In the meantime, we want to share these messages of gratitude from kids around our community in order to demonstrate to the health care workers how grateful we are to them for their sacrifices and for all that they are doing to keep us safe. More importantly, these health care workers need more than just our gratitude -- they need supplies, and they need financial support. We hope that you will consider pledging to support the health care workers for each raindrop, or “gratitude sundrop,” that kids create for the Gratitude Showers Challenge.
The Gratitude Showers Challenge was featured in the Chronicle Telegram and the Morning Journal.