Creative Admiration and Friendship

Life on social media can be a bit strange, for those of us who grew up with phones mounted to a wall, we still find it surprising that we have friends that we've never met in real life. Where as the younger set who has only ever known a world with tech seems to find it completely normal. We've made so many social media friends who have become "real life" friends. Sometimes we are able to find time to meet up in a non-art non-education setting just to hang but the best opportunity to meet our social media friends comes at conferences. In my previous post I mentioned the National Art Education Conference which was held in Boston this year. It's our best opportunity to meet our PLN from around the country and this was the fourth annual #K12ArtChat meet up! It was truly outstanding, we love hugging our PLN. It was especially nice because the team from Do Ink..... (such a great green screen and animation app) hosted the meet up! Thank you Karen and the Do Ink Team, It's such a special part of the conference for us! To see what it's all about we included many pics on the pervious blog post.

While the meet up and getting to know our PLN in real life is AWESOME this year's conference included a bonus real life connection. For years we've been connecting with Peter H. Reynolds and his brother Paul Reynolds on social media and sharing our love of creativity. We were over the moon when we found out that Peter was one of the featured keynotes because we might actually have a chance to give him a hug too!

We messaged back and forth and then the day of his keynote came and this happened (see below)! A shoutout to us and a shout out to our friend and colleague Trevor Bryan, Author of The Art of Comprehension.

It only got better from there, I think we both we're on a high the rest of the weekend! Peter was so kind, we couldn't see him the day of the keynote because he sat and autographed books for hours after his keynote, so we planned to meet up the next day at the beautiful Blue Bunny! Matt, our friend Kelley McGee and myself ubered our way to Deham, MA a sweet little town that is home to the Blue Bunny and the Reynolds family! It was a magical moment walking into a great little indie bookstore /coffee shop and looking over to see both Peter and Paul! It was their twin day (also known as their birthday) and they spend it together every year! They shared a part of their special day with us and we were able to spend quality time with them discussing our passions for creativity in schools and personal art making. They are two of the kindest humans on the planet (Hazel their Mom should be so proud), they also have wonderful friends, we meet their long time friend Bill Norris and a fellow amazing creative educator, Jed Dearybury (a must follow @mrdearbury.)

All we can say is THANK YOU! THANK YOU Peter and Paul for being champions of creativity, childhood and educators! Thank you for supporting us and giving of your time and feedback in our creatively connected endeavors. Thank you sharing this day with us, we will always treasure it!

Wishing you Creativity & Hope,

Laura and Matt