(map)
and the Time Travel Mart
12515 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90066
(310) 915-0200
and the Time Travel Mart
1714 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 413-3388
Field Trip Overview
Weekdays throughout the school year, Los Angeles classrooms make their way to our writing labs to embark on 826LA’s field trips, where we create compelling stories in a few short hours. We can design a custom field trip to complement teacher curriculum, and we offer several standard field trips: screenwriting for high school, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories for middle school, and our most popular field trip: Storytelling & Bookmaking for elementary school.
All of our field trips are project-based, and the ultimate goal is for students to leave with something tangible: a revised essay, a bound book, or a class-produced poetry slam video.
Like all of 826LA’s student programming, field trips are free to schools. To set up a field trip, send us an email at fieldtrips@826la.org!
Storytelling and Bookmaking
In our most popular field trip, students must bring forth their best writing to appease Mr. Barnacle, our never-seen, always-heard (and always-cranky) publisher. They work with volunteers and each other to produce a story with all-new characters, setting, and plot, all the way up to a cliffhanger—at which point students must finish the story on their own, in order to sate Mr. Barnacle's need for originality. Should everyone write up to their potential, Mr. Barnacle may approve their endings, and they'll all leave with a bound, illustrated book to take home.
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure field trip is an action-packed thriller. The students begin writing a story as a group, but stop when the second-person protagonist has a decision to make. At that point, the class splits into two to write each branch of the story. As more decisions present themselves and storylines end, the groups resplit and remerge. Every student ends the field trip by individually finishing the last four unresolved story branches, and they all take home a copy of the adventure.
Screenwriting
In about two hours, under the guidance of a working screenwriter, students will collaborate on a script written for stage or screen while learning to craft scenes and write engaging dialogue. Students will leave with a bound script, published and ready to send right off to Hollywood.
More!
We've hosted field trips on
- Poetry and spoken word
- Whining effectively
- Dystopic writing
- Modern mythology
- ’Zine creation
- Artist statements
- Political campaigns
- Point-of-view/character development
- Storytelling and Bookmaking for English Language Learners
With advance notice, we can create a project-based, writing field trip to match classroom curriculum. If you're interested in a customized field trip, just send us a note.