mural planning session: what a bummer

Wow. Jessie and I just had a really disheartening experience at a nearby elementary school. The school has contracted us to design and paint a mural with students in their auditorium. It's a project I'm really excited about, partly because we want to do a mural in some capacity, but we don't have the funding for one. I'm also excited because the school is really close to our center, and I'm looking forward to building relationships with some of the kids there through this project. And hopefully, some of them will come take classes at our center once they're familiar with us.

owls

I love them all:

http://www.thecraftycrow.net/2010/11/owl-crafts-for-kids.html

Curriculum planning for next term

I came up with a theme for our winter term classes—Transformation--because winter is a time for hibernating and reflecting on yourself and changing. It's also broad enough to include lessons about social justice and positive change in the world.

I've been thinking about the types of classes I'd like to teach and came up with a list of possibilities.

• Recycled art (again)
• Exploring color
• Sharing our stories (Studying different modes of storytelling—books, scrolls, making spoken word recordings)
• Cultures of the world (through their art)
• Printmaking
• Exploring light (working with translucent objects, painting on glass, stained glass, lanterns, etc)
• Puppetry
• Mural class

recycled books

cutest best art show

I've been bad about updating recently because we've been frantically preparing for our Fall Term Celebration, which was today. It went so well. We had an art show in our gallery space, which will be up for about a month, of all the student work from the semester. We also had dance performances from all the dance classes. The Visual Arts teachers had an award ceremony, where we gave out certificates to certain kids. I actually made a different award for each of my 2-5 year olds, so they'd all get one. The awards I gave were: Best Artistic Vocabulary, Best Listener, Teacher's Helper Award, Most Improved Technique, Fearless Artist Award, Artistic Intuition Award, and Creative Energy Award.

The celebration was well-attended, so all of our hard work calling people and advertising in the window and on the sandwich board worked. The kids were very proud of all their work, which was the point after all. The work speaks for itself, so here are a ton of photos.

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.