For Educators

What is Tarnival?

Tarnival is a multi-modal tobacco education program with three components:

a Festival of hands-on science and math based activities
Hope’s Choice, a Street Theatre Performance
this web site

What people have said about the Tarnival Event...

"Great props, costumes, message!" - Tobacco control educator

Who made Tarnival?

The Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at Berkeley, with funding from the State of California, Department of Health Services, Tobacco Control Through the Arts grant. LHS is a museum and resource center for children, parents, educators, and policymakers seeking to improve the understanding and enjoyment of science and mathematics.

LHS has a thirty year history and national reputation for developing progressive and effective educational techniques that empower individuals to strengthen their critical thinking skills, and to make choices that enhance their personal lives, their community and the global environment.

How much does Tarnival cost?

Tarnival is available free of charge to a limited number of schools and public events, thanks to a California Department of Health Tobacco Education Through the Arts grant. Tarnival performances can be arranged on a fee for service basis for programs outside of the state of California, for profit entities and organizations who wish to purchase it after the allotted free spots have been filled.

Book us for your school or public event

Please fill out an School Event interest form and we will get back to you promptly.

How can I use Tarnival to teach?

Links to Internet Resources
Tarnival's Pedagogical Approach
Our Street Theater Script, complete with references
Suggested Questions & Writing assignments

The festival provides a rich field of tobacco information that can continue to be mined in the classroom. There are activities, games and/or information that would provide a springboard for students to do research, writing and discussion about the health effects, advertising, and economics involved with tobacco. To follow-up on the issues brought up in the Festival there is additional information on the web site about what makes up a cigarette and how tobacco effects health, as well as links to sites that address all of the issues raised in the Festival.

The performance can be used to generate a classroom discussion on child labor, pesticide use, deforestation, target marketing and advertising, tobacco industry and agriculture.

It may also be used to illustrate the literary/theatrical concepts of allegory, metaphor, the variety and use of quotations in literature and journalism, the multi-cultural history of masks, the use of visual and physical elements in the theatre, the application of performance for teaching or the history of art in social change movements. If students visit the web site they can get more information to write about these issues raised in the play; the health effects of smoking, target marketing, labor issues related to tobacco.