Philly students play with clay to honor MLK

Philadelphia school kids are using clay animation in honor of Martin Luther King.  

Forty kindergarten through eighth-graders from the Oxford Circle Christian Community Development Center first discussed MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the Clay Studio in Old City. The studio’s outreach program, the Claymobile, typically travels to communities to provide art classes the underserved and hosted the day of service event. 

Then they came up with their own dreams for a better world and used plasticine clay, an iPad and an app called “i-Motion” to create stop-motion videos.

Ten-year old Kevin Coker said, “I want to change people to stop killing and threatening each other, and stop gun violence because it’s like torturing yourself and other people.” His friend Tremayne Johnson, 11, added that he’d like to see more effort put into keeping the enviornment clean. “I’m gonna make [with clay] people throwing trash away and picking up litter wherever they see it,” he said.

Annette Monnier, outreach program director of the Clay Mobile, said that kids also talked about putting an end to animal and child abuse.  “Our missions is really to work with people who don’t have the economic means to do a lot of art classes and I just feel like that’s in the spirit of MLK, making sure everyone gets the same access to education,” Monnier said. “It’s really an inspiration day to do what you love and help people.”