The Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts at UC Riverside is on a mission to make opportunities for creative minds to access the arts for students across the community. Through its initiative, the program has recently collaborated with Sherman Indian High School to explore their artistic interests, from creating a photography book to touring UCR’s campus.

“Gluck Fellows create art programs for community audiences, and these programs are offered to the community for free,” said Christine Leapman, Assistant Director of the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts. “Programs are offered to schools in our local school districts, and we are always expanding our roster of schools to serve as many sites in the community as possible.”

In the fall of 2022, the Gluck program partnered their fellow, Sofia Valiente, a second-year MFA student in the Department of Art, to work with a film class at Sherman Indian High School. Valiente helped to develop and print a photography book containing images of the Riverside community taken by the film students.

“My photo class said that they really enjoyed working with Sofia [which is] no surprise,” said Monica Royalty, who teaches the photography class at Sherman Indian High School. “They liked how she told them her stories and about her photographic adventures.”

The film students collaborated and spent their time with Valiente, coming together for photography sessions and bonding over their shared creative interests.

“Photography has given me a freedom to explore and take agency in my surroundings and I’d like to think that I extended this essence in working with the students,” Valiente said. 

“Our 2022-23 Fellow, Sofia Valiente, has an abiding interest in projects of documentation of everyday life, and brought that interest to her students at Sherman Indian High School,” said Judith Rodenbeck, Director of the Gluck Fellows program and professor and chair of Media & Cultural Studies at UCR.

“For me, this marked the first project where I took a step back and really considered what it could mean to be more of a [guide] and extend what I know about making personal work to a group of young students,” Valiente said. “In other words, what it means to play a role in helping others to tell their own stories.”

In making the photography book, Leapman and the Sherman Indian High School film students crowdsourced equipment and cameras from the local Riverside community. Leapman turned to her local Facebook ‘Buy Nothing’ group for help with the project and received numerous donations of film cameras from the community. 

“The project they have done together provided students with cameras so they could photograph their everyday lives at school and at home,” Rodenbeck said. “This book is the culmination of that project…[serving] as a small but potent intervention into a long history.”

During a visit to UCR on April 21, the Sherman Indian students unboxed “TRBL,” the finished photography book that they collaborated on with Valiente. During the field trip, the students toured UCR art studio and the Department of Art, and were invited for lunch hosted by Native American Student Programs. 

“My hopes are that the experiences of working with Gluck fellow Sofia Valiente continue to drive their desire to interpret their world with fresh eyes and eager minds,” Royalty said. 

For more information about the Gluck program, please visit gluckprogram.ucr.edu.