Secret School and the K.I.D.S. will issue a series of books and posters that document and explore the hidden network of secret gardens that form B-lines, continuous paths of green spaces for bees, birds, and bugs to travel. Add your garden to the B-line and join us for our future exchanges (this schedule will be updated regularly, so check back often):

***Secret Seed Exchange and Garden Party:
Bring seeds to exchange.
April 19 *AND* May 3, 1-3PM
120 Waterbury #2N
Brooklyn, NY 11206

***Storytelling at FEAST:
May 9, 6-9PM
Church of the Messiah
129 Russell Street, Brooklyn
$10-20, no one turned away
FEAST Website

At each FEAST, participants will pay a sliding-scale entrance fee for which they will receive supper and a ballot. Diners will vote on a variety of proposed artist projects. At the end of dinner, the artist whose proposal receives the most votes will be awarded funds collected through the entrance fee to produce the project. The work will then be presented during the next FEAST.

***The Bee Line at Smackmellon:
Secret School and K.I.D.S. install the B-Line Superhighway Map for Birds, Bees, and other Bugs at Smackmellon for the exhibit, Beauty Underfoot.

Exhibition dates: June 20 – August 2, 2009
Artists’ reception: Saturday, June 20, 5-8pm
Sunday, July 26 at 3pm: Artists Talk with Fawad Khan,
Gareth Long, Alison Owen, Mike Quinn and a member of the Secret School and the K.I.D.S., moderated by curator Jeanne Gerrity.
Smackmellon’s Website

***Garden Tours:
Secret Garden Tours are underway for the months of July, August and September. Since space is often limited, email s3cr37.5ch00l@gmail.com to make sure you get the announcement.

July: We visited the Secret School and K.I.D.S. garden as well Brian Trzeciak’s amazing rooftop garden.

***This Saturday, August 8, 1 to 4 p.m.: We will have a workshop on making hanging planters and lanterns at Cuchifritos at Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side (corner of Essex and Delancey). The planterns will then move and get installed as a hanging garden nearby at ABC No Rio (138 Rivington Street). Come, let’s make stuff together!

***Late August Garden Tour: email s3cr37.5ch00l@gmail.com to make sure you get the announcement about this tour.

***August 14, August 28, September 11, and September 25 (6 to 9p.m.) are holiday potluck Barbecues at ABC No Rio: Christmas in July in August, April Fool’s Day, All New Years Day, and Valentine’s day respectively. Get your silly on with us and the whole No Rio crew. Find out more at Hanging Out at No RIo

***September Garden Tour: email s3cr37.5ch00l@gmail.com to make sure you get the announcement.

***Mid-September to mid-October: We will have a series of workshops and crafternoons at Nurture Art, which is right down the street from Secret School and K.I.D.S. HQs. One workshop will be a build-your-own-mobile-garden get together, where everyone will bring something on wheels and create a mobile garden that can live on Grand Street during the show, and then be carted home afterwards.

***In October we’ll be sending our greenhouse-a-go-grow tricycle to the Aldrich Museum in CT to be a temporary part of their community and to grow some winter kale. Welcome our new mobile green machine!

Secret School is pleased to collaborate with Alexander Stewart to examine the importance of food in fostering social networks and the possibilities of barter exchange in decentralizing market systems. A food for art supply swap will begin the event at 6PM and last until 8PM, followed by a 90 minute program of videos that explore cultural relationships with food, including those of Patty Chang, Cecilia Ramirez-Corzo, Emcee C.M. and Ted Efremoff, Joey Frank, Andy Cahill, Liz Magic Laser and Dafna Maimon, Sophia Peer, Karen Tam, Pizza Dog, and a few other food-themed surprises. Secret School and Stewart will issue a corresponding book of recipes, essays, and anecdotes about food.

Bring a homemade dish or art supplies for entry. Arrive early for the swap, stay for the screening.

Return for open format crafting and snacking sessions, a.k.a. Crafternoons.
Noon-5PM every Saturday from April 4 – May 2. Bring snacks, crafts, and friends.

Schedule of Crafternoons:
April 4: Pom-pom and bookmaking session with huong ngo.
April 11: Networking with Anni Holm
April 18: Dumpling workshop with Sarah Best
April 25: No Crafternoon, Antena is at the Hyde Park Art Center
May 2: Last Crafternoon with Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa

Secret School is pleased to collaborate with a team of economists led by Daniel J. Martin to create a functioning and participatory economy based on the gold standard. They will examine the global and political forces that drive the continued mining and hoarding of gold, and the ecological and humanitarian crises that result. Secret School and Martin will present a text that reframes, in a contemporary context, Adam Smith’s argument for the use of the gold as a medium of exchange.

Secret School invites you to a collaborative event with Lin + Lam to examine the geopolitical implications of statelessness. Reflecting on tightened US immigration policy and the closing of Guantanamo Bay in the next year, Lin + Lam explore the inability or refusal to claim belonging to a recognized state. Lin + Lam will lead a discussion arising from their recent projects “Even the Trees Would Leave” and “This Is Not Me.”

Secret School will respond to the issues raised through Lin + Lam’s projects, and the concurrent exhibit at Basekamp: An Atlas, an examination of radical cartography organized by artists Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat.

Secret School is pleased to present Wheel In the Sky, a three-channel video installation by Hong-An Truong. Wheel In the Sky investigates the possibilities of media to bear witness to moments of trauma and moments of poetry when human memory fails. As the video unfolds, the artist questions her father about his interest in the band Journey, and his responses reveal a frustration and acute sensitivity to the loss of meaning in the translation from their native Vietnamese tongue into English and vice versa. The conversation also suggests what impact the years of colonization have had on his perception of Vietnam’s most treasured art form, the poem.

Secret School will collaborate with Hong-An Truong to create a text that reveals, complicates, and further conceals what is lost in translation, creating a liminal space out of what is inexpressible.