KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City mother says the timing of the completion of her thesis project and Master of Fine Arts from Hollins University is heartbreaking but unsurprising.
Courtney Collado centered her research on school shootings and created a short film through the eyes of parents.
With the help of local filmmakers, actors and musicians, Collado crafted a project where viewers can attempt to understand the fear and anxiety of sending a child to school.
“This week has felt familiar in a terrible way,” Collado said.
An elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday that killed 19 children and two adults was a reminder that school shootings have become too common.
“I wanted to use my art as activism to maybe, maybe effect change through viewership,” she said.
Collado's 12-minute short film “Our Sheep to Slaughter” depicts a mother and daughter getting ready for school.
“But there are some interesting details that are normalized by the actors. You see a child playing with bullets at breakfast,” she said.
The scene is intentional to serve as a reminder of the risk parents run sending their kids out, something Collado worked with therapists and Kansas City families to portray.
“We all had open conversations about what bullets are, what guns are, why they are important,” she said. “You start to see more bullet shells and shadows of a daughter, and you start to see this is the anxiety of an American mother sending her child to school.”
With a son in fourth grade, the same age as the Robb Elementary victims, Collado says her research led her to not be shocked to see another horrific school shooting. But still, she remains hopeful others will recognize this event as a reminder more is to be done.
“I think we’ve looked away for too long — we have to look at it,” Collado said. “Gun rights activist and gun sense activists, if we can find the common goal of bringing our children home alive, I think that’s where we start to make ground on this issue, and that’s why I wanted it to be nonpartisan.”
