9: Contemporary Art as Public Pedagogy Curricula Unit

Unit Title: Our Spaces, Our Places
Enduring Idea: We reflect our surroundings and our surroundings are a reflection of us.
        Exploring and expressing our personal, community, and environmental stories
        through recontextualization, juxtaposition, and layering.

Key Concepts about the Enduring Idea:
        --Many factors, including communities of which you are a part, influence your personal identity.
            (Social Studies Unit: People and Places in a Community)
        --Places can be described by human and physical characteristics.
            (Social Studies Unit: People and Places in a Community)
        --Decisions that we make affect others.
            (Social Studies Unit: Needs and Wants in a Community)
        --There are different needs and wants in a community.
            (Social Studies Unit: Needs and Wants in a Community)
        --People make changes to their community.
            (Social Studies Unit: Changes in Communities)
        --People can protect and preserve the environment.
            (Social Studies Unit: Changes in Communities)

Key Concepts about Contemporary Art as Public Pedagogy:
        --Art can tell stories of people and places.
        --Art is not limited to a painting or drawing, but includes the built-environment.
        --Art can affect change in ourselves, others, our community, and our environment.
        --Meaning can be found in the altering of images within our visual culture and public pedagogy.
        --Murals are works of art that are part of the community; they reflect the culture and ideals of the community.

Essential Questions:
        What parts of us are visible in this art?
        What parts of our culture and community are visible in this art?
        How does art reveal our personal stories?
        How does art reveal our surroundings?
        How can our art affect others?
        How can our art protect and preserve the environment?

Rationale:
        As third culture kids, international school students form their identity from a conglomeration of the local culture, home country culture, friends' culture, and more. Though first graders, they can use art to begin to grapple with their feelings of identity and (dis)placement, seeing how wherever they are affects who they are, and vice versa. This unit helps young students to stop receiving passively and start actively confronting their environment, using art as a tool for socially and environmentally conscious living.

Social Studies Skills:
        --Accept and fulfill social responsibilities associated with global citizenship
        --Communicate own beliefs, feelings, and convictions clearly
        --Participate in delegating duties, organizing, planning, making decisions, and taking action in a group setting

Art Standards:
        1a.4 Create artwork in a variety of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) media.
        3a.3 Create 2D and 3D artwork from memory or imagination to tell a story or embody and idea or fantasy
        4a.1 Integrate knowledge of the visual arts and apply the arts to learning other disciplines
        4b.2 Investigate uses and meanings of examples of the arts in children’s daily lives, homes, and communities
        5a.4 Participate in classroom critiques of examples of art from themselves, the class, and art history

End of Unit Assessment:
        Students will select one of the pieces of art they created in the unit. They will record their explanation of how that artwork shows that we reflect our surroundings and our surroundings are a reflection of us. As a class, students will watch a slideshow of everyone’s selected artwork and their explanation. Students will be assess on if the selected artwork demonstrates the understanding and if they were able to explain it to the class.

Lesson 1:
        Students will analyze images of house interiors, discussing who would feel comfortable and live in a space and why. Students will then select an image, a person who would live there as is, then collage to change the space to be their own story. After drawing a new interior space for the person, students can explore layering and juxtaposition further by gluing their magazine person in the drawn environment and gluing a drawn version of themselves in the magazine environment. Students will learn that spaces are a reflection of the people that live there and that they have the power to change what they are given.

Lesson 2:
        Students will interact with various chairs, discussing which they like, what aspects are functional (do a job—a need) and what parts of decorative (pretty, cool, interesting, etc.—a want). Students will suggest people and places that would be appropriate for such chairs. Students will then analyze a place in their school neighborhood (elementary library, cafeteria, middle room, playground, classroom, etc.) and the jobs of a chair in that place. Students will then design and draw a new chair to fit the needs of the place but also reflect the decorative interests of the people who will use it. As an extension, students can create a new absurdist (silly) environment for a chair found in a magazine, juxtaposing function and setting. Students will learn that artists design objects for people to use and for people to see. Students will learn that meaning can be created through contrast.

Lesson 3:
        Students will look at the needs of the environment in Qingdao. What is alive other than people? How can people protect and preserve the animals, and plants to live in a harmonious Qingdao? Students will brainstorm an urban/environmental landscape to represent taking action to help the local environment, working together to unify a final vision for the scene. Students will collect clean “trash” from their classroom, the lunchroom, art room, or anywhere else on campus. Using only collected items and fasteners (glue, staples, etc.), students will work collaboratively create a relief mural of their scene on the bulletin boards outside of the art room. Students will learn that art can be created through found (reused) materials, can be made as a group effort with carefully planning and delegation, and can depict themes to inspire environmentally-responsible living among their community.

Technical Knowledge:
Lesson 1---Space/depth in 2D artwork (size and placement)
                    Craftsmanship in cutting and gluing
Lesson 2---Craftsmanship in drawing and coloring
                    What is a background
                    Space/depth in drawing a background
Lesson 3---Parts of a landscape
                    Space/depth in 2D artwork