Grants

$1500 Survey of Chinese Kites
Peter Boekelheide, Portland, Oregon

Boekelheide, a graduate of Oberlin College in East Asian Studies, is fluent in Chinese after spending a year there in study and travel. In his second grant with the Drachen Foundation, Boekelheide will return to China to focus particular research attention to kite factories and commercial kite makers in Northern China. Written results will be submitted with photographic documentation.

$1000 Collective Memory and Barriletes Gigantes in Rural Guatemala
Christopher Ornelas, San Antonio, Texas

A recent graduate of Yale University in Latin American Studies and Fine Arts, Ornelas’s project, “Collective Memory and Barriletes Gigantes in Rural Guatemala,” will study the collective kite making process and symbolic imagery present in the gigantic kite made in the Mayan villages of Sumpango and Sacatequepez, Guatemala. Covering the duration before and during the All Saints Day celebrations, this study will further understanding of the collective process involved in the design and fabrication of the kites and the cultural and political statements in which they make.

$1200 Cambodian Kites: Education in Four Provinces
Sim Sarak and Cheang Yarin, Cambodia

The authors of the first book on the kites of Cambodia, Khmer Kites, Sim Sarak and wife Cheang Yarin have resurrected the Cambodian kite culture through encouragement of local kite makers, education in schools and the founding of a kite museum in the capital city of Phnom Penh.

This continued grant with the Drachen Foundation will put four individuals in the villages of Cambodia in four provinces, educating area children in their own kite culture.

$1000 Do-It-Yourself Democracy KITe Book
Lisa Van Pelt, Boonville, California

A nationally recognized book artist, Van Pelt will develop a handcrafted kite that acts as a book or a book that contains a flyable kite. Inspired by Denise Levertov’s poetry referencing the use of kites in political protests, Van Pelt’s book-as-a-kite will detail the usefulness of kites in political speech. This book/kite, along with its bamboo structure and string will be housed in a custom made box.

$2250 Kite Wind Power
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

This grant funds research of kite power generation in a project to develop a tethered kite model that will extract energy from the wind. Kites will be designed, built, and tested at a high altitude where the wind blows continually and reliably. In addition, grantees will sponsor a kite design competition during Temple University’s Engineers Week (February 19-23, 2008) for high school and college participants.

$1200 Kites in the Classroom: Interschool Kite Meetings
Cerf Volant Club, Sami Sayegh, Beirut, Lebanon

Focusing on the use of kites as an educational tool in various scholarly disciplines, the Cerf Volant Club of Lebanon will sponsor and lead kite making workshops for teachers and children in Beirut and other schools around Lebanon. In this yearly event, workshops will end in a themed interschool kite fly on the beach. This year the theme is Air Pollution. In addition to the kite fly, a contest judging poems, novels, and drawings of kites will be held.