Art in the Garden has three key components: Art installation (the actual physical product that will reside in schools' outdoor spaces), Art integration (use of curriculum with students as the project is implemented), and Community Involvement (schools will keep a record of how many people from the community like parent volunteers participate in their art projects). Schools and their communities are working together to create permanent art installations to display in their outdoor spaces. Students will generate many of the ideas, teachers and volunteers and community members will help implement those ideas, and with the help of grant money and support from Community Groundworks, schools will have a piece of art they can proudly display.
There are some publicity events in the works, too. After the art is finished and installed, there will be a bus tour of Art in the Garden sites at the end of the next school year (June 2015). The following fall, the Overture Center downtown will host pieces of the art projects in their gallery.
Later in the morning, Laurie Fellenz, Fine Arts Coordinator for MMSD, stopped by to talk to the group about the district's ongoing efforts to increase art integration in Madison Public Schools. The district is creating a network of arts liaisons from all schools, and next year MMSD will host several workshops led by Kennedy Center Teaching Artists.
Exciting stuff!
As the workshop went on, I couldn't help but notice that we talked about school gardens just as much as art in the school gardens. It could be because gardening itself requires creativity, especially when you're gardening with kids and working that into your school's curriculum. Not that that's the same as art integration, but still. Also, frankly, gardening is a heck of a lot of work and that work is ongoing. Finding ways to involve students in that work and recruit enough volunteers to keep a program going takes an enormous amount of organization and creative energy, so we had a lot to talk about at that workshop.
I came home from the workshop feeling good about a lot of things. (It's hard not to feel good when you've spent the day in a place as beautiful as Troy Garden!) For all the challenges we are facing in our schools - and those challenges are many and mighty - it's reassuring to know there are teachers and parents and district leaders and community organizations truly dedicated to providing a valuable, well-rounded public education for all students in this city. We're doing a lot of good things at Crestwood, but we are certainly not alone. And that makes it easier to dig in (forgive the pun) and continue my (our) commitment to our Outdoor Ed program here.
By the way, I've got more blog posts coming soon. I'm due for another update on the garden. School starts in less than a month, and we have some fun things planned for the beginning of the year, plus we need to do a little cleanup around the woods and gardens; yes, we need more volunteers for all of that! Also, we've unfortunately we've got a newly discovered invasive species on the Crestwood grounds. More details on all of that and more COMING SOON!!
Cheers,
Susan