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Student Dance Video for Time Capsule of Hope

City of Davenport

Is there a more fitting song for our tense, troubled times than “Together”, by the contemporary Christian act For King and Country ?

Dance students from Sudlow Junior High School in Davenport and the Creative Arts Academy of the Quad Cities recently did an interpretive dance to the song, and made it into an inspiring video for the Time Capsule of Hope project. The video premiered Monday, Jan. 11 on Paula Sands Live on KWQC.

Kimberly Woods, K-12 Talented and Gifted Facilitator for Sudlow Junior High School and the Creative Arts Academy, says the dances express students’ hopes for a better future for the Quad-Cities. The Talented Gifted program serves students who demonstrate outstanding abilities and intellectual/creative potential.

Credit Davenport School District
Kimberly Woods

“The initial campaign was the Time Capsule of Hope. This is something the Davenport Community School District as well as the city of Davenport partnered together, and because of 2020 and everything that ultimately has happened, they collaborated to come together with this initiative to bring hope back to the community, to our students, our kids.”

Woods worked with CAA dance specialist Bridget Jessen to create the video.

“I brought this initiative to my building, and Bridget, the CAA dance teacher, communicated with me and said this is a really cool initiative. Can my dance students be part of it ? I said, absolutely, because the more people involved is definitely what we want. We want to make sure that everybody’s dreams are a part of this, because ultimately these kids involved in this – the people involved in this -- are literally going to be part of history, because their dreams are going to be planted in the time capsule.”

Jessen took it to her 8th grade students, and they talked about how to showcase their hopes and dreams for the future, and they did an interpretive dance to “Together,” which features Kirk Franklin and Tori Kelly. Woods was very impressed.

“She shared it with me and I was totally blown away. I said, wow, the kids just really took it and ran with it and did such a good job, and she was like, it just brought tears to my eyes, and I agreed.”

Woods wanted the kids to be showcased even more, by getting it more exposure.

“It seems like we always hear negative things – whether it’s in our community, and I wanted to showcase something that’s good, something positive.”

There are eight student dancers in the video, and they were recorded in different locations – some at home, some at Sudlow’s dance studio, and some outdoors. The Time Capsule of Hope is a Quad-Cities project that was launched last October by the city of Davenport, in partnership with Davenport schools. The Covid-19 pandemic made 2020 a challenging year, but hope still remains in America’s communities.

The time capsule is meant to highlight the hopes that Quad-Citians have for the future. As part of the project, the community was asked to submit their hopes in a variety of creative ways, including video. Those hopes are being collected by the Davenport Public Library and placed within a time capsule -- which will be buried in Vander Veer Park this spring, next to a new tree planted in the park on Oct. 17th. The time capsule will be opened in 2036 as part of a celebration of Davenport’s 200th birthday. Sarah Ott, chief strategy officer with the city, says submissions for the time capsule are due by Jan. 31. The city didn’t want to just plant trees, but plant hope for the future.

Forms and instructions for the time capsule can be found at davenportiowa.com/hope/. The CAA dance video is available at the website of the Davenport School District,http://www.davenportschools.org. For more information on CAA, visithttp://creativeartsacademyqc.weebly.com/.

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.