“The Photoville Passport was created for Photoville Education Day, an annual art education initiative that gives local middle and high school students an inside look into the exhibitions, artists and curators that make up New York City’s premier pop-up photo destination, and the power of visual storytelling.”
More teacher resources available here: https://unitedphotoindustries.com/education/resources/
A selection of interactive prompts pulled from Art21’s Educators’ Guides, the Learning Library offers both discussion questions and hands-on activities in relation to Art21 artists and film segments.
Use themes and big ideas driven by essential questions to frame your investigation.
Give students options: introduce multiple artists and media sources.
Push beyond a media-driven curriculum.
Think and talk more; make less.
Emphasize process over product.
Use themes and big ideas driven by essential questions to frame your investigation.
“The first catalyst for the curriculum was Paulo Freire. In his book, Teachers as Cultural Workers, Freire discusses the traditional practice of teachers—“reading a class of students as though it were a text to be decoded”—and envisions classrooms where students reciprocate, “observing the gestures, language…and behavior of teachers.” Of course, students are already doing this, all the time; however, they are not typically invited in any structured way to share the results of these “readings” with their teachers or with each other. The power dynamic that Freire is uncovering here, the fact that assessment in almost all public-school classrooms travels in just one direction, from teacher to learner, was one of the major themes running through “Assessment as Dialogue.” For a long time, I’d wanted to redress this imbalance in my own classroom, and Freire’s words added urgency to that desire.” -Todd Elkin, Art21
“Over the past fifty years, street art has become one of the most common forms of contemporary art in urban public spaces. Sometimes it’s called vandalism and other times the more generic term, ‘graffiti.’ These aesthetic acts in public spaces are not only worthy of discussion, but also important to teach since they often contain social cues that help us decipher the visual landscapes in which we live. Teaching students an academic vocabulary to discuss street art helps them understand and analyze the nuance that can exist in what appears to be mere paint splatters on a street sign. An important conversation is happening in our urban spaces, and you don’t need to purchase an admission ticket to see it.” - Nick Kozak, Art21
This widely-recognized method nurtures the development of artistic works-in-progress through a four step, facilitated dialogue between artists, peers, and audiences. The Process engages participants in three roles:
1. The artist offers a work-in-progress for review and feels prepared to question that work in a dialogue with other people;
2. Responders, committed to the artist’s intent to make excellent work, offer reactions to the work in a dialogue with the artist; and
3. The facilitator initiates each step, keeps the process on track, and works to help the artist and responders use the Process to frame useful questions and responses.
The Critical Response Process takes place after a presentation of artistic work in any discipline. Work can be short or long, large or small, and at any stage in its development.
The facilitator then leads the artist and responders through four steps:
1. Statements of Meaning: Responders state what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, striking in the work they have just witnessed.
2. Artist as Questioner: The artist asks questions about the work. After each question, the responders answer. Responders may express opinions if they are in direct response to the question asked and do not contain suggestions for changes.
3. Neutral Questions: Responders ask neutral questions about the work. The artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them. For example, if you are discussing the lighting of a scene, “Why was it so dark?” is not a neutral question. “What ideas guided your choices about lighting?” is.
4. Opinion Time: Responders state opinions, subject to permission from the artist. The usual form is “I have an opinion about ______, would you like to hear it?” The artist has the option to decline opinions for any reason.
“Over the course of those four years as part of ART 180, and in partnership with Legal Aid Justice Center and later RISE for Youth, Performing Statistics helped advocates close a youth prison, change laws and policies on school suspensions and expulsions, and advance Virginia’s investment in community-based alternatives to incarceration. The project has been seen by tens of thousands of Virginians, been introduced to 20,000 classrooms through the Amplifier Foundation, and has trained more than 150 officers and recruits in the Richmond Police Department. This profound impact has happened in a short amount of time, and now it’s time for the project to extend beyond Richmond and beyond Virginia.” - Performing Statistics Website
“If we teach students to see racism as an idea that's expressed through behaviors, institutions and cultures rather than an immutable character trait, we free them to see things more accurately and with more openness to change, argues Cyndi Kernahan.” -Inside Higher Ed
“While the United States has become increasingly diverse since then, the culture of our schools has remained much the same as in my childhood: white middle-class. American Alphabets is an attempt to remake the buildings blocks of our language to reflect our differing cultures. The young people I worked with chose the words and suggested the imagery of their alphabets. I created a Spanish alphabet with Spanish-speaking children of immigrant farm workers. The words they chose—like nervioso or impostor—were symptomatic of their uprooted way of life. Taken as a whole, their lists of words amounted to a kind of cultural self-portrait. Students in Cleveland worked with me on an African Alphabet and girls in a private school on a Girl’s alphabet. At the Queens Museum I collaborated with Arabic speaking middle school students to create the Arabic Alphabet. The students had emigrated with their families from Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco and Lebanon.” Wendy Ewald