Art teachers foster a collaborative environment through group projects. Young students learn to use a sewing machine and join their individual fabric squares into a class quilt, elementary students participate in a school-wide effort to learn about biodiversity protection efforts in Bioko, middle-school students connect to real-world scenarios and interdisciplinary problem-solving to collaboratively design games, and high-school students team up with a former art student to create a mural that celebrates all subjects and disciplines.
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As an art teacher, you are in an excellent position to develop collaborative projects for your students. On a practical level, you can have students work in pairs or small groups, correlate lessons with classroom or other specialist teachers, or work with an artist. You can also collaborate with local or national museums or art centers or with a teacher and art class in another state or country. How will you and your students collaborate through art?
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Made from fabric or paper, sewn or glued, a class quilt is a simple and effective way to complete a collaborative project. Each student participates in the design process, and with careful preparation, all the elements are assembled into a visually appealing design. In the past, my students have assembled elaborate paper quilts, each square a dazzling collage of painted and printed cut strips. This year, we took this idea to the next level with inspiration from the African American quilting community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama.
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Students and faculty at Loesche Elementary School in grades K–5 participated in a special collaboration with the Philadelphia Children First Picasso Project and Drexel University’s Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program (BBPP). This international project sought to increase students’ awareness of the threatened flora and fauna of the island nation of Bioko, located off the African coast of Equatorial Guinea.
Students in their music class tapped into their synesthetic minds by listening to two compositions containing very different musical elements such as dynamics, rhythm, form, and tonality. Students sketched or wrote whatever entered their minds while listening to the different musical pieces. Colors, shapes, emotions, stories, memories, and even numbers flowed onto the paper. Next, students took their sketches and ideas to art class and chose which sketch to develop into a finished artwork.
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During our remote learning from April to May 2020, our librarian held a poetry contest. One poem, “Dear Friends,” truly captured that moment in time. It considers what the writer thinks she would have done differently if she had known the day we left school that we wouldn’t return to in-person learning for three long months. After receiving permission from the poet and a grant from our local Public School Foundation, I began to design a ceramic mural that would feature the poem and allow my students to make artistic choices.
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Combinatory play was defined by Albert Einstein as “the act of opening up one mental channel by dabbling in another.” Considering the value of play in promoting productivity and creativity, my Essential Question was: How can a lesson in linear perspective become a way for students to dabble in environmental science, connect to real-world scenarios, and promote interdisciplinary problem solving while including an element of play?
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Have you ever considered bringing in a community artist to help your students design and build a site sculpture? I did, and it was a huge success! Here are a few tips to help you get started. I tend to be a theme-based kind of teacher, so I wanted this sculpture to have a theme. We chose to dedicate the sculpture to my son, Croy, who had passed away due to medical error. Croy was an avid surfer and a lover of all things having to do with the ocean, so that inspired my students to get started on thinking about the design.
As a high-school teacher, it is always fun to see former students doing exciting things within the art world. I was happy when I heard that one graduate, Ivan Montoya, was creating a mural in the historic Eastern Market in Detroit. I stopped by his jobsite to see the work in progress, and I thought it was skillful, imaginative, and truly inspirational. An idea started to brew.
During the past two years, in collaboration with Northampton County Juvenile Justice Center (NCJJC) staff and residents, we completed six murals that now hang in the hallway near the residents’ dorm-style suites. These ongoing mural projects provide a way for the teens to nurture their creativity while completing this residential treatment program.
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Cressa Maeve Beer is a transgender stop-motion artist whose work is featured in short films, music videos, documentaries, and more. Her animated works share positive messages about overcoming bumps in the road of life. Beer produces works that celebrate every individual’s personhood, and as advocacy for the transgender community, her work shows how art can be a transformative component in personal growth and rejuvenation.
