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.

So, nobody stood up for the second-to-last statement, which I think makes that a really important problem for us to focus on in our work with teens from now on. There were a couple of kids who didn't stand up at all and largely ignored the activity, but the other twelve participated and seemed interested in the statements. I was so thankful for Jessie's contribution to this activity—she has really great ideals and is always bringing my focus back to larger issues when I feel bogged down by small problems we encounter.

Then we had a warm up discussion. I raised three questions that students could respond to just by raising their hand or speaking up.

• What does art mean to you? How does it play a role in your life, in any way?
• How does art play a role in your community? Your community could be your school, the block you live on, your whole neighborhood, or any other place you spend a lot of time in.
• How do you think art can be used to make your community a better place?

Students talked about how art is a means of self-expression for them; they said it occurred in their community largely through street art and graffiti; they talked about ways that art can beautify neighborhoods. These questions were very basic, surface-level questions, but that was the place I knew I needed to start at, because this is a school that has no arts programs, and many of the students probably haven't had art classes since early elementary school.

After these questions, I asked students to respond to a summation of the ideas we'd talked about through a collage. I brought an example collage I'd made on a regular-size piece of paper, responding to the question: What does art meant to you, how does it play a role in your life and the life of your community? On mine, I made a drawing of my neighborhood with photos from magazines added. With cut-outs, I made a mural on a side of a building, a park with sculptures in it, and a billboard that had art and statements about social justice on it instead of advertising. I explained that, to me, art is a way to express my opinions about justice, and that I felt that art should have a place in my neighborhood that's just as important as the place that billboards have, so that's why I chose that for my collage. I then asked students to make their own, with materials we brought in. They had 20 minutes. While they were working, I circled the room asking kids how what they were putting on their paper related to what art meant to them and their communities, and probing their thoughts a little if they seemed stuck.

When our time was up, I asked them all to put glue on the backs of their collage. We then took turns coming to the center of the room and put our collages on a giant piece of paper on the floor. We put all of our collages together to form a patchwork quilt. 

Here was the result:

We sat down and spent some time looking at all the pieces. I asked if anyone wanted to share what was on their rectangle. Several kids came up and talked about why they chose certain imagery and how that related to what art meant to them. One student talked about how seeing cartoons from the early Disney had inspired him, and how Walt Disney had been able to build a huge company out of those initial cartoons, and how he hopes art can be a way for him to make money too.

I then asked the following questions, as a way to tie the project we'd just done into larger ideas about making community.

• What is community?
• How can art create community?
• Do you think this project “created community” in some way? What if it were done outside on the street or in a park in your neighborhood?

One student answered the first question by saying that community is anything that brings people together. I wanted the group project to do that exactly, and to demonstrate how art can create community by bringing people to work on something together, while still allowing for everyone to express themselves on an individual level.

We then spent some time gauging whether they want to keep doing art projects in school, outside of their academic classes, or after school. The guidance counselor asked the students to fill out cards stating what type of art most interests them (music, drama and photography were popular ones). There was a lot of enthusiasm for doing a large-scale group project like a mural or mosaic. The 14 students in the group were hand-picked by several teachers because of their motivation and interest in the arts in some way, so we're going to use them as a jumping-off point to continue planning art projects in the school.

The teachers were also really pleased with the activity. The four teachers involved seem very committed to bringing the arts to the school and creating an arts club among the students. It was a great starting point for a strong partnership between the school and our organization, and works toward our end goal of having more kids involved in the programming at our center.

Fall term classes ended Friday, so now I have some time during our winter break period to think about a larger focus for next term's classes and to plan cool activities. We'll be having weekly classes at the library during the winter, as well as an art show in a couple of weeks with work from this semester. So I'll still be busy. I'll write soon about a conference I went to last week about African-American transformative curriculum design and some resources I acquired which could be helpful to other art educators. Now I have a meeting with someone from BUILD Baltimore who is going to help me strategize how to organize the teen meetings to be more fun, engaging and thought-provoking for the kids. I'm really proud of the activities I planned for this group, but I always need advice about how to run workshops that get kids to think critically and also have fun.