presented to a college class

Made a presentation to a class at the University of Baltimore today about the work I've been doing. The class was studying different community arts efforts around the city and planning their own. Really not much to say about it except that while I was up there speaking I was remembering how disengaging the university pedagogical structure can be. I did the same stand up/sit down activity I'd done with the teens, to give them a taste of the demos we do in schools. One of my supervisors told me after the presentation that I was doing a good job with everything, which felt good to hear since I'd been feeling pretty deflated this morning.

demonstrating community building through art in high school

We finally had our teen focus group at the vocational-technical high school I've been organizing with, and it went REALLY well. The teens were engaged in the activities I'd planned and seemed enthusiastic about us working there more in the future. It was an hour long session during one of the lunch periods. Everyone came in, had pizza and soda, we introduced who we are and what we do, and then we did a stand-up/sit-down activity. I read statements and the students stood up if a statement applied to them. I decided to do an activity like that to start things because it gets people out of their chairs, it allows students to acknowledge one another, to learn things about one another, without anyone having to be the first to talk (or talk at all). It's an activity I will definitely do again. Here are the questions, which Jessie helped come up with, mostly about their feelings toward their communities:

• Stand up if you feel comfortable walking around your community.
• Stand up if you feel comfortable walking around your community at night time.
• Stand up if you feel like you are a valued community member.
• Stand up if you feel like the people around you care about the future of your community.
• Stand up if you want to make a difference in your community.
• Stand up if you think art can be used as a tool for positive change.
• Stand up if you have ever participated in a group art project outside of school.
• Stand up if you want to take a more active role in your community.
• Stand up if you use art as a means of self-expression.
• Stand up if you feel like your ideas are valued and heard within your communiy (however you define it).
• Stand up if there is a place (your house, your school, a rec center) where you feel safe in your community.

andy goldsworthy lesson

I wanted to include natural objects in my recycled art class, and have the children experience working in nature, but planning such a lesson in this neighborhood is challenging. There aren't any woods or large parks nearby and we don't have the capacity to bus our students (yet). But I felt that for these reasons it was all the more important that the students experience working outdoors using natural objects. So I went to the woods over the weekend and filled my car up with branches and sticks.

my sandwich board / signage woes

It feels strange to be working in a community center that is completely empty most of the time. Nobody comes into our building. The first reason for this is that the door remains locked all day for security reasons. When you walk by our building and look in through the big glass windows in front, you see a dark, empty dance studio behind metal gates that stay closed and locked most of the day. Our art studios are on the second floor, and you can't see in the windows from the street. The only time that the lights are on downstairs and the gates are open is when a class is going on in the evenings. The only way to get into our building during the day is through an unmarked door on the side of the building. Then you have to ring a doorbell and explain on an intercom why you want to come inside.

tall hat swag-off at another high school

Here's a photo of a demo Jessie and I did at another high school. We've formed a great relationship with the art teacher there, who let us take over her 9th grade class to do a recycled materials tallest hat competition. Here are two of the hats during the walk off:

They had fun despite themselves! Now hopefully some will come take classes at our center or at least come to our teen group.

presentation to HS

I made a presentation to the guidance counselor and several faculty members at the local vocational-technical high school about my ideas for how to partner with them and bring the arts to students there. The teachers were very supportive and willing to get involved, had lots of ideas for how to facilitate a "teen arts advisory group" at the school. Because they don't have an art department, certain faculty at the school are trying to create a core group of students interested in the arts who can take part in extracurricular activities. They are particularly interested in starting a drama club, so we talked about how our organization can help with set design and could possibly serve as a satellite performance space. They're going to schedule our first focus/discussion group during a lunch period, which I'm so thankful for because we'll definitely be able to pull more students in that way. We'll use the students who come to that as a jumping point. Now we need to find space in the budget for pizza, and I'm attempting to create a beautiful eye-catching flyer.

I'll post some pictures from yesterday's pre-school class, where I introduced my opus of lesson planning for this term.

making paper

My 2-5 year old recycled art class (“Trash in the Class”) made paper and it was pretty much the messiest thing ever.

 We ripped newspaper and put it in our blender. We were very fond of the "ICE CRUSH" setting.

The pulp in this tub will be purple pulp! I just used food coloring because we had it and it's safe for little hands.

Some of us definitely needed some help with straining the pulp, but most of us got the hang of it after a couple of attempts. And if not, we helped out by squeezing the sponges dry.

One sheet drying. We ended up with only a few sheets because some of us poked our sheets immediately after laying them down on the tarp. Oh well!

One of the ceramics teachers advised me to let the paper sheets dry on a large piece of felt next time, because it absorbs the water. The finished product was not enough paper to fill our books, but we had a good time and learned about the process, as well as a new way to reuse scrap paper.