Students Teach...each other and me!

A student-frisbee-enthusiast teaches class members how to throw
and catch a frisbee in our generously sized lecture hall!

In an effort to put some of the ideas of progressive thinkers and educators that influence many socially engaged artists - into practice, my students were asked to teach something to the class that they are passionate about and can be taught in under 10 minutes (lots of time constraints with 24 students and 1 hour class time.)
Some of the topics taught included: how to play Xbox (using our 9 x12’ screen, very impressive,) how to catch and throw a frisbee (inside our 156 seat lecture hall,) and how to ‘properly’ eat a cupcake (so that the frosting is evenly distributed with each bite.)

This was a very enjoyable way to for us to better consider some of the key points that a socially engaged artist thinks about when working with a community:  having genuine interest and developing trust, while sharing knowledge, expertise, and agency.  Also what some of the ‘materials’ available to a socially engaged artist might be such as how to repurpose available physical space to create a new mental space with different or unexpected outcomes.  To continue the conversation about this and related topics, our next meeting will be Wednesday, March, 30 6-7:45pm at the Chatham Public Library! (Please note the changed time/date!)

The titles of the two themes we covered were: Philosophers, Monuments and Historical Reenactments (talk 3,) and Dialogical/Skillshare: Putting the ‘Social’ back into Socially Engaged Art (talk 4).  These themes were a way to loosely group together some really interesting and exciting artist projects.  Many wonderful artists were spotlighted such as Paul Ramirez Jonas, Harrell Fletcher, Carmen Papalia, and Mark Allen.  Check out the links to the right for more info.