Tag: engagement

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Community Programs Media Projects

Sudden Flowers – Ethopia

 Sudden Flowers project in Ethopia

stories and videos from 2007.

I was reminded of this project today when I was looking at the work of co-founder Eric Gottesman. On his site is a more recent mobile portrait studio project he did with Sudden Flowers in 2011. Other projects with Sudden Flowers are on his site and I was especially intrigued with the touring 2006 project Abul Thona Baraka throughout Ethopia. Members of Sudden Flowers accompanied the exhibition in its travels and engaged audience members in dialog inspired by their photographs > look at the slide show.  Many more links to Sudden Flowers in the photographs and installations section of Eric’s site.

Categories
Community Programs

The Laundromat Project

A few years ago, we blogged about a community program known as The Laundromat Project. The Laundromat Project is a community-based art program that takes place in local laundromats across New York City. What makes this program unique is the fact that they use a space where people of different races and backgrounds converge. The laundromat is a common ground that all types of people come to, and the downtime created in waiting for laundry creates a perfect opportunity to engage in art. Right now, the project works out of different laundromats in the city, but their long-term goal is to create an art center that adjoins a laundromat and create a more permanent dialogue with a particular space.

I found the most groundbreaking aspect of the project to be its offering of residencies for artists. In their Create Change program, artists have the chance to break out of the independent mindset of working as an individual. Most artist residencies give artists an incubation space for their own work. The Create Change program allows artists to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the community. This departs from the norm, and allows for the artists in residence to explore what is possible when art is integrated into a community setting that would otherwise not be a part.

You can keep up with what The Laundromat Project is doing by visiting their website and calendar.

Categories
Community Programs

Aja Project- Youth + Photography Transformation

Aja is an acronym for the phrase “Autosuficiencia Juntada con Apoyo” which means supporting self-sufficiency. Aja Project is an organization that provides photography based educational programming to youth that have been affected by war and displacement. In this program, the students are taught to think critically about self identity while developing leadership skills.

This non-profit organization is based in San Diego, California and utilizes participatory photography methods in after-school and in-school programs. Since its start in 2000, Aja has helped more than 1,000 displaced youth share their stories with over 1 million viewers. They have had public exhibits at the National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall, United Nations Headquarter, and the San Diego Museum of Arts.

Aja Project also has two international sister organizations- Record of Truth in Burma and Disparando Cameras (para la Paz) in Colombia. Aja is continuing to look for ways to further expand their unique and life changing program.

You can read more about this organization here!

Photo from Aja

Categories
Community Programs Resources

Teen Empowerment & Employment through the Arts

Artist for Humanity (AFH) is a unique and innovative arts organization that provides empowerment and employment for teens through the arts (painting, photography, sculpture, screen printing and digital media).  Located in Boston, MA since 1991, AFH’s mission “is to bridge economic, racial and social divisions by providing under-resourced youth with the keys to self-sufficiency through paid-employment in the arts.”

AFH partners professional artists/mentors with youth to design, produce and market art products from various media.  Growing up in Boston, I have always been a fan of AFH’s work and certainly hope to work with them one day.

Be sure to check out their blog too!

                                                            photo from AFH

Categories
Media Projects

Through Positive Eyes, a Participatory Photojournalism Project

 

Through Positive Eyes, a Participatory Photojournalism Project 

from the NYTimes lens blog:

The South African photojournalist Gideon Mendel spent more than a decade documenting H.I.V./AIDS in Africa. But despite his commitment and passion for the subject, he found he could not continue.“The time has come to hand over the camera,” Mr. Mendel said. “Me photographing H.I.V. positive people is just not appropriate anymore.”So Mr. Mendel, along with David Gere, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, created a participatory photography project that encourages people who are H.I.V. positive to tell their stories. Over the last four years, they have put cameras in the hands of 72 people living with H.I.V. in six cities across the globe. The project, called Through Positive Eyes and largely financed by the Herb Ritts Foundation and the Ford Foundation, operates in conjunction with the U.C.L.A. Art and Global Health Center, which Mr. Gere leads. It aims to dismantle stigma associated with H.I.V. using an unconventional form of photojournalism. read more

Categories
Education Resources

Creative Practice towards Civic Change

Just learned about this Canadian organization, Broken City Lab, via FB where a friend posted a link a great bibliography they have put together:
50 TITLES / 50 PERSPECTIVES: A READER’S GUIDE TO ART & SOCIAL PRACTICE

Looking forward to exploring more – esp the research blog and projects.

Broken City Lab is an artist-led interdisciplinary creative research collective and non-profit organization working to explore and unfold curiosities around locality, infrastructures, and creative practice leading towards civic change.

They work in Windsor, Ontario, Canada and abroad.

 

Categories
Community Programs Education

Dana Edell

Dana Edell is currently the executive director of SPARK Movement, a national activist movement working to end the sexualization of girls. Prior to her work with SPARK, she founded and served as executive director of viBe Theater Experience from 2002-2012. viBe is a nonprofit performing arts education organization that offers free afterschool arts programs to underserved teenage girls in New York City. She has produced and directed/ co-directed more than 60 plays, 7 CDs of original music and 10 music videos. She has over 15 years of experience as a teacher and leader in arts and advocacy programs with teenage girls. She co-founded and directed Inside/Out Performing Arts, a theater-making program for girls affected by the juvenile justice system in San Francisco and was a theater artist-in-residence in New York City public elementary and middle schools. Dana has taught theater and social change, arts education, solo performance and qualitative research methods at NYU, CUNY, the Bard College Prison Initiative at Bayview Women’s Prison and at Manhattan Marymount College where she developed a minor in Arts and Communities. She has a BA with honors in Classics/Ancient Greek from Brown University, an MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University and a PhD in Educational Theater from NYU.

Following are notes from the inspiring guest lecture  given by Dana to the Community Collaborations Class on April 17. 

Dana’s first experience working in a community based program was in college in the SPACE program at Brown University where she  worked with incarcerated women creating performing arts programs.

After college, she and a friend founded the Inside Out Performing Arts program started in Fall 1998 in SF (pre-internet!). She also worked for Brava – SF – the oldest women’s theater in country with an extensive educational program.

She realized that she needed to be a working artist in order to be good teacher and director for the girls. She decided that she needed graduate school so went to Columbia for a MFA in Directing.

In the summer of 2002, she and Chandra Thomas, a fellow-student at Columbia, started a program for girls in theaters at Columbia with high school students from around Columbia. First performance “Say it Like Is”. This became viBe Theater Experience

Vibe Theater Experience: Caught in the Act (youtube link)

After 10 years, Vibe in now located in  YWCA bulding in Brooklyn – Atlantic Ave with other women/girl’s social justice organization. Now has staff in 7 people – 7-10 projects per year. Vibe stages many program including songmakers program – origianl music.. No censorship. Only rule no bad theater! s Just had 60th play produced and Vibe entering 10th year.

After reading academic books about girls and not seeing her experience with girls, decided she wanted to make an impact at a more theorectical and policy level. So she went to grad school at NYU in the Educational Theater Phd program. Her dissertation was on Vibe. She wrote it was she was still at Vibe working every day. Interviewed the girls as research. Developed new research methodology for girls when she realized that interviewing them in traditional manner was not  getting at deeper truth. Gave them tape recorders to all girls in study and wrote out questions and ask them to make a tape in response to the questions and to feel free to go anywhere with questions. Gave Dana access in a very different way. Her dissertation became about how girls perform themselves–how they want things to be. What was on tape recorder was very different than what came out in shows. In theater pieces, girls were perpetuating stereotypes while acting like they are telling real stories.

Dana’s approach is to give the girls support in everything they do but will challenge and question along the way.What does mean to provide space to tell difficult stories. Is  it great for girls? the audience? what are we doing about the stories they are telling. She asked herself: shouldn’t I be doing something about the content of the stories? Need more than just spaces to process. Wanted to get at roots of  problems – which brought her to SPARK.

 Spark Summitt – started about a year and half ago. Started by Deborah Tolman and group  of 5 other women  who were developmental psychologists. Began as a response to the APA report on the sexualization of girls– finally a study that said it was bad – what we all already knew but finally proof! SPARK makes girls part of solution. Dana became executive director since in May 2011. The board consisits of girls from 13-20 from around the country. Partners with 60 organizations. Read more about Spark here.

[Get inspired by following Sparks’s LEGO campaign]

Categories
Education

Inspiration and Resources

Tonight in my Community Collaboration course, we had the pleasure of listening to presentations by Ife Abdus-Salam, Katie Kline, and Alice Proujansky, 3 Photography & Imaging Alumni who work in community based arts organizations and public schools. They were inspiring and informative. I did my best at live blogging:

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Ifétayo Abdus-Salam, P&I ’06, www.ifesalam.com
Ifétayo Abdus-Salam received her BFA in Photography & Imaging and a BA in Africana Studies from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, (2006), and a MAT in Teaching and Learning in Art and Design Education from The Rhode Island School of Design (2009). In addition to her career as a visual artist, Ifétayo is a visual arts instructor at Bronx Leadership Academy II in the South Bronx, where she utilizes her passion for the arts to promote youth expression and critical discourse on contemporary issues.

“silence will not save us” a belief that infuses her art work and pedagogy as a teacher.

Ife’s experience before graduate school

  • Leadership Program – Dept Of Education funded by 21st century school fund– started teaching in that program while she was a student.
  • Children’s Aid Society first as program coordinator for after-school and summer program.   Created art programming that was brought into drug prevention program. Started digital photography programt

Then went to RISD to Masters in Art Education. Then started teaching in DOE. School was able to hire her at first as art/photography/health teacher. Started 4th year. New Visions school – [see New Visions for Public Schools] New Visions works with schools to boost student acheivement and gives extra funding. With New Vision funding, Ife has restructed art program to start digital photography program in fall but students can only take for one year at most.

Challenge to have students rethink what Art is.

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Katie Kline, P&I ’05 www.katiekline.com
Katie Kline is currently the Teen Academy Coordinator at the International Center of Photography (serving approximately 450 high school students annually: (www.icp.edu/school/teen-academy) She will be co-teaching the Tisch P&I Summer Pre-College program in 2012 and beginning the MFA program at Columbia University.

Before working at ICP, Katie was an assistant teacher at

ICP Teen Academy

  • photography, writing, public speaking, life skills
  • 50% scholarship, 50% paid model, 450 students
  • teen foto fridays that allow students to all work together outside of classes.
  • ICP also offers many community partnerships

Think about community and the importarnce of maintaining networks every step along the way.

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Alice Proujansky, P&I 2002, www.aliceproujansky.com/

Since graduating from the Department of Photography and Imaging in 2002, Alice Proujansky has taught photography to under-served youth with Urban Arts Partnership, the Red Hook Community Justice Center, and the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services in Crown Heights, Red Hook, Harlem, East New York, the Lower East Side, Washington Heights and beyond. She is currently a Staff Development Consultant at Urban Arts Partnership, where she runs professional development workshops, develops arts integration curricula, and coaches Teaching Artists. Her focus is on providing relevant teaching resources so artists can teach the artistic process, academic rigor, and engaged citizenship.

CASES – alternative sentencing program for  incarcerated youth

Urban Arts– offers programs in underserved schools – teaches integration of arts and citizenship – teaching academic subjects through the arts.

Likes the challenge of teaching within structure of the school and with the arts, reach students that have trouble with traditional teaching and reading/writing.

After she herself burned out, she recognized the need for teachers to take care of themselves so she invented the staff developer position to train teaching artists.

Responspive Classroom – alternative education research – using effective teacher language – great resource

Association of Teaching Artists – join their list serv
*many links on their resources pages 

Teaching Artist job fair coming up. Will let us know along with  professional developmental workshop info,

 

3 More resources from tonight

Kennedy Center for the Arts Arts Edge

National Arts Educators Association

Citizens Committee for Children of NYC

Categories
Community Programs

SPARK a Movement

Very inspired by this movement. Great site too.

SPARK a Movement: “SPARK began as a response to The Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls and its call for grassroots mobilizing around the clear and present danger that sexualization poses to girls and young women. The Report clarified the difference between healthy sexuality and sexual objectification.

SPARK was designed to engage girls as part of the solution rather than to protect them from the problem. A day of workshops and action spots gave girls the tools they needed to become activists, organizers, researchers, policy influencers, and media makers.

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Question Bridge

Question Bridge: Black Males is a transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. Through video mediated question and answer exchange, diverse members of this “demographic” bridge economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions.
questionbridge.com

Question Bridge: Black Males – Project Trailer from Question Bridge on Vimeo.