Community

Civic Engagement

Protector 841 with Wonder Woman shadow. Artist: Linda Stein. Leather, metal, mixed-media; 78 x 56
Protector 841 with Wonder Woman shadow. Artist: Linda Stein. Leather, metal, mixed-media; 78 x 56

Find Cards is a differential learning and assessment strategy that Keifer-Boyd (2014, 2013) developed in the 1970s for teaching mixed age groups from five-year-olds to elders in art galleries. When participants create Find Cards, facilitators discern what learners find important. Also, in composing a question, reflection on what is learned integrates assessment with learning.

FIND CARD ACTIVITY: Partner with another (someone you don’t know in the group). Spend 10-15 minutes together looking at the exhibition and writing a “Find Card.” When finished, place your card with the other cards. Select another card together and find a work that the card prompt directs attention. With your partner, discuss the question posed on the Find Card and other interpretations or knowledge you have about the work. A Find Card begins with a directive or clue of something to find in an exhibition and includes a question. For example:

FIND CARD EXAMPLES:

  • Find an artwork that is about a civic action. What are the challenges of the civic action conveyed in the work?
  • Find an artwork about power and vulnerability. How does the work convey these ideas and with what impact?
  • Find a situation of diversity, difference, exclusion or inclusivity in one of the artworks. Can you relate to the situation? Have you ever felt pressure to exclude someone? What happened?
  • Find an artwork that makes you feel angry. Why do you think it made you feel this way?
  • Find an artwork that makes you feel empowered. Why does it make you feel this way? Do you think others would feel empowered by this too?

RESOURCES:

  • Keifer-Boyd, K., & Kraft, M. L. (2014). IDEA<—>Empowerment through difference <—>Find Card strategies. In S. Malley (Ed.), 2013 VSA Intersections: Arts and Special Education Exemplary Programs and Approaches (pp. 147-158). Washington, DC: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
  • Kraft, M., & Keifer-Boyd, K. (2013). Including Difference: A communitarian approach to art education in the Least Restrictive Environment. Reston, VA: The National Art Education Association.
  • Stein, L. (Ed.), 2016. Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females—Tapestries and Sculpture by Linda Stein. Philadelphia, PA: Old City Publishing.

Voice recording of “Civic Engagement” Find Card Activity on July 12, 2016:

 

Download “H2F2 Civic Art Education: Taking the Challenge of Change” Find Card Activity

From Nativist Hysteria to Upstanders

Ruth-Gruber
Ruth Gruber 805. Tapestry by Linda Stein. Leather, archival pigment on canvas, fabric, metal, zippers; 57 x 57¼ x 2 inches; 2015.

VIEW FILMS:

DISCUSS:

    • Kindertransport as upstander acts
    • Photographs, films, and art as upstander acts: “words and images to fight injustice” Ruth Gruber
    • Restitution as upstander acts

RESOURCES:

    • Knight, W. B. (2010). Never again a (K)night with Ben. In A. Arnold, A. Kuo, E. Delacruz & M. Parsons (Eds.), G.L.O.B.A.L.I.Z.A.T.I.O.N, Art, and Education (pp. 126-134). Reston, VA: The National Art Education Association.
    • Miller, D. (2003). Principles of social justice. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.
    • Pérez de Miles, A., & Peck, S. (2017). Exhibition as curriculum: Creativity as a human right. Art Education, 70(4), 60-64.
    • Stein, L. (Ed.). (2016). Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females—Tapestries and Sculpture by Linda Stein. Philadelphia, PA: Old City Publishing.
    • Stein, L. (Ed.). (2016). Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females—Tapestries and Sculpture by Linda Stein. Philadelphia, PA: Old City Publishing.
Download From Nativist Hysteria to Upstanders

COMMUNITY

There is never a single story about any place or people. In this encounter, select one of the Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets sculptures to imagine a life story situated in a community of people. With collage, drawing, and painting, create a series of artworks of people in action that includes an element of the selected art in their action. Display the series together and discuss the work with others. Or collaboratively create an interactive story game using Twine, Inklewriter, or Storyboardthat, which are open-source tools for sharing, nonlinear stories, to show the possibility of becoming an upstander. Examples include: Bea the Upstander game by John Rapaccioli & Elissa Kapp (2016) and an interactive story for teachers on why it is important to address LGBT bullying by Kevin Jenkins (2016).

Below is a visualization to start brainstorming with a group of students, or with oneself or another individual.

EMPOWERMENT VISUALIZATION

Relax, find a comfortable position, close your eyes if comfortable doing so as you begin to explore the past, present, and future. Nothing you think about now needs to be shared with anyone else.

  1. FOCUS ON SPECIFIC EVENT:

Focus on a specific disempowering place, image, text, action, or sound that you experience almost everyday. Search your memory for the mundane, your typical everyday way of being to locate a vivid everyday experience that may seem small and inconsequential but in some way instigates or perpetuates stereotypes, misunderstanding, intolerance, oppression, distrust in learning with others about each other. Is there a loss, a displacement, an absence, or did someone or something appear that changed the situation in a way that you did not want changed. Keep searching through your daily experiences starting from today and travel back in time until one place, image, text, action, or sound that you hear or see or experience almost everyday stands out to you as particularly disempowering.

  1. SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE EXPERIENCE

Where are you in this situation?

What is going on around you?

Who else is there?

Are you doing something? What is it?

How are you feeling?

Are others sharing your feelings, or are you alone with them?

What are you feeling in this very specific disempowering experience?

  1. TRANSITION TO MAKING CHANGE

Now re-envision that experience changing everything that made it uncomfortable, belittling, sad, or awful into comfort, strength, a sharing amongst others, even if not in the particular setting, who are benefiting from your vision. See the disempowering experience and transform every inch of its negative reach to an empowered space, an empowered situation. If you were to communicate the transformed event, what would you do? How could you create an experience for others that would both reveal this act of disempowerment and empower others on how to change this form of disempowerment for themselves and others?

  1. PREPARING TO CREATE:

When you start your work where will you begin? Will you begin by searching for some images or information? Will you talk to others? Will you draw what you saw, or your thoughts, or feelings? Reflect and make visual your reflections in some way, whether text, drawing, images, or gathering data.

Return to looking at the selected sculpture and reinterpret the piece from the perspectives gained from the process of this encounter.

Interact with Spoon to Shell #821

Spoon to Shell #821
2015
spoon, shell and mixed media
11”x2”x14”

Click here to see image detail

Click here to interact with Spoon to Shell #821