Untitled Flashcards Set

Reconstructing Social Spaces:

It is not enough for youth culture makers to deconstruct aspects of the current culture that do not support a sustainable global culture of joy and justice. Young artists must also learn to construct new spaces in which caring, courageous communities can emerge. Artists create social spaces -temporary and permanent opportunities for people to connect and interact. Art teachers can become community-based artists-identifying community themes, working with students to make aesthetic investigations ofcontent, and creating new spaces for discourse through engaging local and dispersed communities through student artworks. One can escape the society of the spectacle by stepping into worldviews generated outside dominant paradigms. Including the perspective of artmaking practices that arise from within local communities into the school curriculum honors the most traditional and the most progressive aspects of social lifepreserving what is good, challenging the status quo, and imagining new artistic and social possibilities (Burnham & Durland, 1998; Congdon, 2004; Jacob, 1995; James, Gonzalez &Mamary, 1999; Klein, 2003). Creative teachers build on and expand local traditions. The yearly student show of individual artworks can include collaborative pieces that investigate community themes. Local interest and knowledge of quilting might be combined with curriculum studying the Names Project (a gigantic quilt/public art piece that commemorated those lost to AIDS), Chilean arpilleras (narrative needleworks documenting the everyday lives and political issues), or various Peace Quilt projects. The final project could be a collaborative quilt for a local public building, documenting local health issues affecting area children. Working collectively, students and teachers can literally reshape their schools and communities through creating murals, mosaics, sculptures, pavements, and seating installations." Such projects also reshape the image of youth in the public imagination. Youth are seen (and see themselves) as contributors to public life, not as public nuisances. Exhibitions, art sited in community settings, banners, magazines, pageants, projections, websites, installations, and countless other art forms can be used by students to share their investigations of personal stories, community themes, cultural deconstructions, and meaningful cultural exchanges with others.