Community Arts Project~

Hello everyone and welcome to this blog's FINAL POST! =(

This past Wednesday we had our Community Arts Project (CAP) presentations! There were many issues that we as students are passionate about and I love how that aspect came alive in class that day. Thank you all for the wonderful presentations.

As for my CAP presentation, I think it went really well. My group consisted of 5 members - Angela, Melody, Tara, Helen, and myself (Kelly).

In summary, our group was passionate about the issue of mental health in children. We believed that in general people associate such a negative connotation with individual who have mental health issues by referring to these individuals as "crazy."  However, we want to educate children that individuals who have mental health issues are not "crazy," they are just like any other person who is in need of help. This is why we believe in advocating for children to express their feelings without being scrutinized in the classroom. In elementary schools, we wanted to stress the importance of children being able to express their social and emotional states. Because of my group's work with the guerrilla art, Post-its inspired us once again to create our "big" project idea to promote awareness about this issue for children. Also, this project comes in a form of package that can be easily mailed to schools.

Our big project idea is known as "Stick-it!" and this is generally how it would be implemented into a classroom: 

• Ideally, it is supposed to be implemented in February since it is known as mental health awareness month.
• Teacher can begin to share a quote/ statistic/ picture (depending on the age group of the children) about mental health and encourage the children to offer their input on it.
• Teachers can then encourage children to express what they think or feel either by writing and or drawing on the post-its.
• Post-its can be easily incorporated into the classroom by sticking them to a wall or a bulletin board. 
• When children take a post-it and finish writing and or drawing on it, they decide whether or not they want to post it back on the wall and share it with the class. Ideally, teachers can encourage children to share their post-its. 

Our stakeholders are:

• Fairglen Public School
• Staples Business Depot
• Kids Help Phone
• Vista Print
• To Write Love on Her Arms

I think our presentation went really well. We were just glad we got it done and over with. However, I think it would have been cool to actually bring in props that symbolized what the teacher package would have looked like. We could have demonstrated how the content would have been organized and such. One positive aspect about our presentation is that many people seemed to have liked the video that was shown in class (which can be found in my previous "Guerrilla Art" post). 

Overall, we were all nervous to present our big idea to the class but we're glad we did. We believe it is a relatively simple yet effective idea that teachers can use to begin their day with children. 

xoxoxoxoxo

Now, let's end this final blog post, with the...

Art Word of the Week!

This week's art word is Texture! Texture "refers to the surface quality of a work of art" (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p.144). Usually, artists love to use different materials with various surfaces to add uniqueness to their artwork. Also, using different textures can inspire artists to create new forms of artwork instead of always using the same materials over and over again. Here is an example of texture that is primarily used in digital art: 

http://aethereality.net/textures.php

I can't believe that this is my final post! Hopefully, those in internet land found some sort of amusement in my posts... Now, for my final sign out...


Until whenever fellow bloggers! :D


~Kellz


References:

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, E. J. (2009). Art & creative development for young children (6^th Ed.). Delmar, USA: Cengage Learning.