This program will take students on an immersive journey through coastal Georgia, exploring how traditions, storytelling, and cultural practices shape identity and community. Through hands-on experiences, local partnerships, and time spent in historically rich landscapes, students will engage with the ways memory is preserved and passed down across generations. By connecting history, culture, land, and lived experience, this program helps students better understand how traditions sustain communities over time.
How does preserving tradition create community and pass on collective memory to the next generation?
Day 1: Arrival in Savannah
Students arrive in Savannah and settle into one of the most historically rich cities in the American South.
The evening includes a group dinner and introduction to the program, offering students a chance to connect and begin thinking about the role of history, place, and memory in shaping community.
Day 2: History, Land, and Storytelling
Students begin their exploration with a focus on Savannah’s history and the role of land in preserving memory.
Through an African American history experience, students learn about the contributions, resilience, and cultural impact of African communities in the region. Later, they engage in a Gullah storytelling and language workshop, where descendants share family histories, music, and traditions connected to the land and waterways.
This day highlights how stories are carried through generations and how language and culture keep memory alive.
Day 3: Traditions, Foodways, and Cultural Knowledge
Students travel to St. Helena Island, where they experience Gullah culture through agriculture, food, and traditional practices.
They visit a family-owned farm, learn about medicinal plants and healing traditions, and share a meal prepared with local ingredients. Later, students take part in an indigo dyeing workshop and explore the history of rice cultivation, connecting these practices to African knowledge systems that continue to shape the region today.
Through these experiences, students see how traditions are lived, practiced, and preserved in everyday life.
Day 4: Connection to Place and Cultural Continuity
Students travel to Sapelo Island, where they explore a landscape deeply tied to history, culture, and resilience.
Through guided experiences, they learn about Native American history, the legacy of enslaved communities, and the ongoing presence of Gullah-Geechee culture. Hands-on activities such as basket weaving and fishing offer insight into traditional skills and their connection to environment and survival.
This day encourages students to think about how place, memory, and practice are deeply intertwined.
Day 5: Craft, Art, and Cultural Expression
Students explore how traditions are preserved and shared through art and craftsmanship.
They participate in a blacksmithing demonstration rooted in African traditions and engage with local artists whose work reflects African American and Gullah-Geechee stories. Through hands-on creative experiences, students see how art can carry history forward and keep cultural memory alive.
Time in the historic district allows students to observe how past and present coexist within a living community.
Day 6: Mapping Community and Reflecting on Belonging
On their final full day, students bring together their learning through a community mapping project.
Working in small groups, they explore neighborhoods, identify community assets, and reflect on both visible and intangible elements that contribute to a sense of belonging. They then create and present their own interpretations of what makes a community strong, connected, and meaningful.
This experience encourages students to apply what they have learned to their own understanding of community and identity.
Day 7: Reflection and Journey Home
Students prepare to return home, taking time to reflect on the experiences, stories, and relationships that shaped their time in Georgia.
They leave with a deeper understanding of how traditions are preserved, how communities maintain identity over time, and how collective memory is passed from one generation to the next.
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