Resource

Writing Your Own Songs Inspired By Protest Music and NYC Artists with Katalina Gutierrez

Resource Publisher
Katalina Gutierrez

This project combines music and poetry to create a protest song. Throughout these three mini lessons, students will learn about the power of their personal stories, write a poem or a song, and share their projects with the world. The final artwork will be in the form of a poem or a song.

This project combines music and poetry to create a protest song. Throughout these three mini lessons, students will learn about the power of their personal stories, write a poem or a song, and share their projects with the world. The final artwork will be in the form of a poem or a song.

The Videos

YouTube

The Lesson Plans

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

About Katalina Gutierrez

Katalina’s approach to art stems from a process grounded in poetics, meditation, and a faith in personal transformation that’s informed by social justice action. During the last five years, she has worked on documentaries and narrative films as both a director and cinematographer. In addition, she also helped students to explore their talents as an art instructor. 

While traveling in Latin America and the United States, Katalina collaborated with international dancers, multimedia artists, and playwrights to create experimental pieces that merge political and narrative elements.

A resident of New York City for the last fifteen years, Katalina moved to the United States to continue her studies. She believes in spreading the voices of those unheard, so she found a niche in Reel Works—an organization that mentors, inspires, and empowers underserved youth in New York. 

As a cinematographer and director, she uses her camera to document crucial issues that focus on minority rights. In 2018, she collaborated with the Biking Public Project to document the lives of a group of delivery workers in Manhattan struggling under the new laws that prohibit the use of electric bicycles. The documentary, A Winter with Delivery Workers, was recently shown at the Museum of the City of New York and featured in The New York Times.

She received her formal education in Costa Rica, where she studied Photography and Sociology. In New York, Katalina continued her studies in Media Arts and Women Studies. In 2016, she was awarded the Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship.