Tuesday, 25 September 2012

our story

This blog is about young artists who dream big.  This blog is about collaboration, inspiration, creativity, learning and most of all finding new ways to share our visual voice with others.  The students involved in this project have attended countless lunch hour meetings, taken a tour of local existing public art, written reams of ideas about what they feel public art is and can be.  We've looked at images, discussed differing viewpoints and found common ground on what we feel is most important for our project. A few students even volunteered to sit at a boardroom table at the artist selection panel meeting at city hall and my classroom was packed the day the announcement was made as to who the artist was that we were to work with.  The most notable part about these students is that they did not do any of this for grades.  There is no course attached to this project or extra credit of any kind. Students have been invited to be a part of this project with only one proviso - they are passionate about making this public art project come to life.  On any given day there will be 25-45 students ranging from grades 8-12 sitting in the art room waiting for the latest meeting to start and ready to take the next step in this journey.

About a year and a half ago myself and my art teacher colleagues, Ms Miller and Ms Salbuvik were contacted by Melanie Devoy of the Richmond Art Gallery.  She asked us if we had seen the call for proposals the City of Richmond had put out for public art projects.  She expressed she would like to write a joint proposal if we were interested. We were excited about the opportunity and collaboratively wrote down our ideas editing into the summer.  Fall arrived and with it the news our proposal had been selected and the whoops of joy could be heard down the halls.  We had been awarded a $15,000 grant and the opportunity to work alongside a professional artist - amazing!

Fast forward to today and we can happily report that Jasmine Reimer is our artist in residence.  She is very positive, thoughtful, interested and skilled.  Jasmine is committed to a collaborative process and is mindful of the students top concerns: that the project express their ideas and that they can get their hands dirty in the actual creation of the work.  She has since visited us for a tour of the school and to meet the students involved. While here she shared an excellent presentation that highlighted contemporary public art and key concepts of what we might consider for our school and our project.  We are all eager to get started.


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