Start the New Year right, with Art Advocacy!

It's a short school week this week, but why not start off the New Year and dive right into some advocacy lesson inspirations!  Beat the mid-winter blues with these ideas for Youth Art Month. Start now and build momentum for March 1st!

1

Organize an Urban Sketching event (you don't have to be in an urban area - any size local community has tons of great places to sketch) in your community for students - particularly good to tie in with a study of local history.  Think about a historic place, with an indoor space to sketch.  Or, do it virtually with Google Street view on a Smart Board if you cannot travel!    

*Many years ago, my college painting professor in New Paltz NY, had us sketching regularly in the community, and in particular sent us to sketch and paint at the historic Huguenot cemetery.  I've never forgotten the experience, and while it's the wrong time of year to sketch outdoors in a graveyard, keep it in mind for the spring!

2

Make an in-house video on what art means.  Have student releases signed, and have 'interviewers', volunteers to speak, and 'videographers.  Edit and play in-house or on your district web/Facebook page.  Students can use a prop titled "What Art Means to Me" and write their responses to hold up.

3

Use props from #2 and post daily to Twitter.

4 Bonus Idea!

Create walking paintings - cardboard with a face cut out from a famous work of art. 

Becoming an Advocate for Art Education

This is a quickie post, to share a link to a video worth viewing.   The video, Becoming an Advocate for Art Education, was created by New Jersey art teacher Eric Gibbons.

Eric blogs at www.artedguru.com.  He has more advocacy information on the Advocacy tab at Art Ed Guru.  Follow this link to find this Advocacy information. 

Thank you, Eric, for letting The Artful Advocate share your terrific video and blog! 

Jazz up your Back-to-School Bulletin Boards!

The Artful Advocate took the summer off, but now we're back, and you can expect to see a few welcome back to school posts with some great advocacy tips for starting your school year, in the coming days and weeks!  We'll start today with creating quickie bulletin board art. 

Many of you are just starting back to school, and probably want to make a big splashy impact for your art programs.  Your school will probably be hosting an Open House or something similar in near future, and maybe you are panicked about how to fill your bulletin boards to make an impact when you have barely seen your students yet.  On top of all this, National Arts in Education Week is looming, September 10-16.  For more information on this week, check out the  National Arts in Education website here at this link.  From the website, here's a terrific quote about the value of the arts in an education program:
"The arts are an essential part of a complete education, no matter if it happens in the home, school, or community. Students of all ages—from kindergarten to college to creative aging programs—benefit from artistic learning, innovative thinking, and creativity. Celebrating National Arts in Education Week is a way to recognize this impact and share the message with friends, family, and communities."

So... you want to make your art program visible to visitors who come to the school for Open House or other programs.  That means quickly filling up those bulletin boards I mentioned before.  You don't have much time, so think SIMPLE and COLORFUL so that people can't help but notice them as they walk by.  Perhaps you might try some easy and quick one-class period project ideas in conjunction with International Dot Day, which is on September 15th, during National Arts in Education Week!  Read the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds for inspiration!  You may want to sign up to participate at the Dot Day website, and get a link to a free planning guide.  Or plan on your own: there are so many easy ways you can incorporate dots/circles in art lessons. 

• Share the work of Roy Lichtenstein and discuss his use of Ben-Day Dots.  Use the eraser on the end of a pencil for a stamper to make your own dots!  For a quickie projects, have students  outline simple shapes on 8" paper squares with black Sharpies and fill in with dots of primary colors, one color inside the shape, another color outside.  Hang them all side by side like a patchwork quilt.  Or you can outline letters on small sheets of paper that put together will spell words like CREATE, or the Elements of Art, or whatever you want!  Hand out the papers, and have each student paint their letter filled with primary dots.  Simple and effective when displayed together, and if it says something meaningful when assembled, that's a bonus for you! 
• Look at the work of pointillist painters and create mini-pointillist paintings of a simple subject: a flower, a bug, a heart, a star, your initials, etc.  
• Look at Kandinsky's painting Squares with Concentric Rings, and create one day concentric circle paintings using analogous colors (color families), that can be quickly stapled up side-by-side again like a big quilt, to fill bulletin boards like a giant mural.  
• Use discarded CD's as your dots, and hot glue them to small square pieces of tag board.  Have kids draw or paint petals on them to make flowers.  The CD can be decorated with Sharpie markers.  

Thinking ahead a year, in order to avoid the stress of having to cover those bulletin boards in time for Open House when you are still learning your students' names, here's an easy alternative.  In their final art classes in June, have your students listen to some happy music and use leftover paints to paint abstract "Improvisations" (look at Kandinsky, again) inspired by the music.  Or use leftover construction paper scraps to make colorful collages.  Give different colors of paper/paint to each grade level or class.  Hang them all on the bulletin boards before you leave in June; if you've used different colors per grade, arrange them in a rainbow order when you display them to give the display cohesiveness.  Then hang sheets of newspaper over the displays to cover them for the summer.  When you set up your classroom next August, pull off the newspaper and you've got ready-made colorful bulletin boards!

Stop back in a day or two for another post about your back-to-school bulletin boards! 

Art Advocacy made Easy!

Sometimes it's easy for something really simple to seem oh-so-complicated.  As art educators, the concept of advocacy can seem formidable.  We already have so much to do just developing a good solid art program and putting it into action,  How are we supposed to find the time to be advocates, too?  Isn't there someone else to take care of this for us?  

Well - my friend Lee Darter, who blogs at Art Room Blog, has written a guest post at Amanda Koonlaba's blog, Party in the Art Room blog.   Lee's guest post is called Art Advocacy in Your Classroom, and is clear, concise, sensible, and informative.  This post is an absolute gem!  Reading what she had to say was, for me, one of those 'knock yourself on the forehead' - 'Duh!' moments.  Why have I been making something that is SO simple, SO obvious, seem SO complicated??  Trust me, when you read this, you'll agree!

If you'd like some sensible suggestions for advocacy that will not be an extra burden to your workload, I recommend you follow THIS LINK and hop on over to the Party in the Art Room and read Lee's post!  Meanwhile, here's a poster that Amanda developed based on the main points of Lee's essay. 

Thank you, Amanda and Lee, for allowing me to link to your blog and post!

Start your week with the Art Advocacy Fab Five!

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5  I'm introducing a new feature on the blog today!  Every Sunday night I will be posting an "Art Advocacy Fab Five" - five easy tips for the week, (or a tip each work day), to help you get through your work-week while keeping advocacy at the forefront!  A big Thank You to Donnalyn Shuster, a regular contributor to this blog and a fellow member of our NYSATA Advocacy Committee, for contributing the content for today's and the upcoming 'Fab Five' posts.   Here we go!!

Second semester is on the horizon. Beat the midwinter blues with some energizing projects and proven strategies to build awareness, involve stakeholders and put some fun into serious program promotion!  

1 Famous Art Quotes - Have students create posters based on famous art quotes.  Use traditional media or Photoshop.

2 On My Own Time - Host a school-wide exhibition of creative efforts by students, faculty and staff (include your BOE and parent groups).  Host an 'opening reception' so that all of the stakeholders in your community can gather to discuss the role of art in their personal lives!  (Unity Through Art!)

3 Unity Through Art - use the YAM national theme, and pose these questions to your students: How can they best illustrate this theme?  How have the visual arts brought people together?  What is the power of the visual image?  Tie it in with middle and high school social studies classes - the power of images to unite or to motivate! involve other student organizations in this project - how to use a "school community" art project to bring everyone together..

4 Add some fun and challenge to PE classes - have students design and construct a 'miniature golf course' 6 hole challenge - and host a mini-tournament.  Get the staff involved also!  With permission, post about it on your school website, and/or write a story about it for your local newspaper. 

 

5 Create your own Manikin Challenge for the arts and post it on your school web page (with permission).