Activist Art Teacher Training
Basic Two Day Program

DAY ONE

9am- 9:30– Introductions – Schedule - Logistics

9:30- 10:30 Central concerns and questions: Where are we teaching? Who is our audience? What are their major concerns? Are they already progressive in their politics or not? Are they conscious of their oppression? What assumptions are they making about their everyday lives that they might be open to exploring? What stories would be healing for this group to tell? What stories would provoke some consciousness raising? Describe your location in history to your students. Be aware of the pitfalls of becoming a missionary.

Strategies to discuss with your students:

Working in the Studio – Why are you making your art (Intentions or Goals)? Who is it for (Audience)? Where do you want it to be seen (Context)? If you are working with “apolitical” art students, how can you get them to see the politics inherent in everyday life and within their work? Exercise: The Politics within a Pair of Shoes (or any other mundane object). What resources were used to make the shoes? Who made them and how much were they paid? What were their working conditions? Where were the shoes bought? What was spent to market them? How were they transported? ETC. How does one make an effective art piece about all these issues?

Working in Collaboration with Other Artists – Are you working with these people for the first time or do you already have a support group connection? What are your intentions, what is the context and who is the audience? How do you develop a permeable ego after individualistic art education?

Exercise: Image, Object, Text - Give the students an unrelated image, object and piece of text. Have them create a narrative piece about them.

Working in Collaboration with Grass Roots Movements – How do you find the group who will be receptive to working with you? How do you create a group if a local one doesn’t already exist? How do you connect with larger networks and do some creative cross-fertilization? How do you facilitate collaborations beyond the typical posters and banner activity? (Hands on project – brainstorm an art action or site-specific piece for a particular context with a movement theme) How and when do you engage the media? What are the drawbacks of playing to the media? How is the composition of the relationship between the grass roots movement and the artist a work of art (performance event)? Exercise: Fashioning a temporary community through site-specific work.

Working in the Community Context - What is the duration of your residency or the time line for your project? How did you choose this community or how did they choose you? Do they know you and do they have reason to trust you? If this is a new community for you do you have a bridge person? What is a bridge person? How do you locate a bridge person? What is the crisis that is occasioning the work? How does that get defined objectively and subjectively? What is cultural democracy? How do you to brainstorm the project with this group? Is it a politically conscious group? If not, you might want to begin with a media literacy activity (hands on exercise) and then proceed to an Action/Research exercise.

Working on a Public Art piece – Are you the sole facilitator? How will you conduct your research about the site? Will you look for collaborators or consultants? Do you want community participation or collaboration? Exercise: Collecting Stories: The Personal is Political

General Overview: No matter what kind of art your students are producing and where they are producing it or with whom, it is important to try and develop an awareness of identity, privilege (skin, class, religious, ability, regional, gender, sexual orientation, age, looks, etc.) and oppression.

Other important questions: How do you make socially engaged art education attractive to straight institutions? Is this institution aware of your activist art orientation? If not, is there a way to encourage social engagement without scaring the students or threatening the other faculty or administration?

What are the issues facing that institution that are causing tension, anger, discomfort, and how can you show them that art might be an excellent way to channel these difficult emotions and process the experience to yield positive results? What are the strengths of working outside the System and creating your own organizations? What are the pitfalls?

10:45-12:15- Slide Show – A history of activist art from broad sheets during the Peasant uprisings to the present

12:30-1:30 – Lunch

1:30 – 3:00 – Hands on exercise – Action/Research (story sharing, skill inventory, site-specific piece brainstorming)

3:30- 4:00 – In depth discussion of exercise process and of Action/Research – both as collaborative teaching tool and as ongoing community art project

4:00- 5:30 – Hands on exercises – Media Literacy and the Politics of an Everyday Mundane Object

Dinner

6:30-9 – Resources – Books, Magazines, CDs, Websites and Videos – We will look at the bibliography, readers of various kinds, and walk through some of the Jubilee Arts Interactive CDs and possibly look at a Media Education Foundation video / Puppetista Video

DAY TWO

8:30-10 – Gentle Yoga class

10:15 -11:15 – Image, Object, Text Exercise – Discussion

11:15 – 12:30 – Grass Roots Movement Exercise – Discussion about such movements’ resistance to working with artists (it can be just as difficult as working within these movements as within mainstream institutions).What do you do with activists who are entranced with celebrity power or who see artists as doing the decorative stuff – not the “real” work)

12:30-1:30 – Lunch

1:30 – 2:30 – Evaluation and Assessment Methods (both of your teaching and of the students’ projects)

2:30 – 3:30 – Fundraising/ Gigs/Survival/Burnout

3:30 – 5 - Closing / Feedback/ Mailing List