How art created in public can be a voice for the people
Over and over I have been asked, why street art? Why is it important enough to garner this much attention and study? Shouldn't your students be learning more about how to paint still lives?
And so Amanda and I applied for a fellowship through Fund For Teacher and the Marth Holding Jennings Foundation to go abroad and study the art of Spain and Portugal. Public art, and the effects it can have on a community, have long been of high interest to us both professionally and personally. Our goal with this project was to address some of our own gaps in knowledge and art making skill sets so that we can transform ourselves, the students in our classrooms and our community. We started to acquire the skills used by street and public artists to create a work of art that will be displayed on the streets of Madrid, and have brought these artistic skills home to our students. The kids are in for a wild ride this year!
In the summer of 2020, our community heard the call for racial and social justice. With it came an artistic outpouring. New murals sprouted along public streets and adorned local businesses. Some of these murals were spontaneous and others were requested by business owners out of fear of property damage. All spoke a clear message of the need for conversation about racial and social justice. Many of these artists who created murals during the summer of 2020 spoke over Zoom with our students and a few even did artist residencies in our classrooms, creating an immediate engagement and intervention in courageous conversations. This street art is happening right now, in our immediate environment as a response to current topics bringing Artivism to the forefront of many artists' minds.
One goal of this project is to explore how street art serves as a way to create connection, build community and open up opportunities to explore art as a response to cultural and political shifts.. Students use visual literacy strategies to interpret the stories of others found in the street art as well as communicate their own story. We want to help students learn to articulate evidence of how works of art impacts communities and how artists are influenced by cultural factors, similar to the social justice murals created in our own town.
We also want our students to change the way they perceive the role of artists and students as active participants in shaping the world around them. Instead of art only being about having the skills to create decorative images, they will learn to see how art can enlighten or change public perception and make space for unheard stories. This change in learning and thinking style will create empathic students ready to take action. Our students are global learners who can think both within and beyond themselves, connect their learning to the real world, recognize the transformative power of sharing stories, and connect "here" with "there" in order to empower citizens young and old to make change.
The biggest impact will be in providing a space, through art, for marginalized voices to be heard and respected. Representation in a community is key to fostering a sense of belonging and this can be achieved through public art that echoes the thought process, beliefs or imagery from a group of people. By sharing with students how marginalized voices are represented in the cities of Madrid, Lisbon, and their hometown they will begin to feel comfortable finding space to share their own stories. Public art will create tangible items to prove they are connected to the community. Once students see themselves reflected in the community, they can feel validated in who they are and find agency to make changes. Without that connection or sense of belonging they will forever feel like outsiders whose voice goes unheard, whose ideas will not be listened to, who turn to apathy instead of empathy. With underrepresented voices and those of the majority, a new kind of tangible culture can be created together, forging the relationship between students, their families and the wider community.
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