Community, Art and Culture || Looking Outward, Looking In: Community in Art Education

National Art Education Association

Looking Outward, Looking In: Community in Art EducationAuthor(s): Theresa MarchéSource: Art Education, Vol. 51, No. 3, Community, Art and Culture (May, 1998), pp. 6-13Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193725 .

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_A s a broad concept and simple term, community has found its way into

current public discourse. We hear that it takes an entire village, or

community, to raise a child. Ecologists study biological communities,

and even in law enforcement, the emphasis is on community policing.

In education, discussion centers on school and classroom communities, and in art edu-

cation the topic is community-based art education. However, careful attention reveals

that participants' conversations are employing the term in a variety ways. Community

may refer to a collection of individuals, including students, teachers, administrators,

and support staff, who work within school settings, directly participating in the educa-

tional process. Or it may refer to the local environment that exists outside classroom

walls. Within these two broad categories of internal and external communities, there

are a number of educational approaches to community-based art education.

I will discuss the several meanings, approaches, and implications of community as it

relates to art education and schooling. In this process, I will provide examples from the

experiences of one rural southern Indiana school community as parents, students, and

teachers worked to develop and implement changes in the arts program.

LOOKING OUTWARD-LOCAL ENVIRONMENTS AND CURRICULUM

Community-based art education has been recommended by numerous art educa-

tors (Blandy & Hoffman, 1993; Katter, 1995; London, 1994; Marschalek, 1989; McFee,

1961; Szekely, 1994). Careful reading, however, reveals three interpretations of com-

munity-based art education that differ with respect to questions asked of communities

and roles advocated for arts students. While certainly there is overlap and blending

among the different interpretations, they are quite distinct. These three approaches

may be summed up as Takingfrom, Learning about, and Acting upon the local commu-

nity and environment

BY THERESA MARCHE

Student model of landmark buildings on Main Street, Stinesville, Indiana. Photo by Jordan March M A Y 1998 A R T E DUCATION TI0 N



TAKING FROM: THE HUNTER/GATHERER ROLE

The hunter/gatherer mode is exem- plified by London (1994), who urged teachers and students to step outside their schoolrooms and undertake a visual odyssey to discover and directly experience the real world, claiming that, "the world outside the classroom is far grander, more compelling, and ultimately more instructive than the world inside the classroom" (p. xiii). London asks the question, "What is out there?" In his child-centered, discovery- learning approach, students go out to collect artifacts from the immediate environment, returning with actual objects or visual examples of formal ele- ments and principles of art, such as texture rubbings from pavements or photos of brick patterns on buildings. London acknowledges a role for parents and local citizens in art programs; they and their stories are to be collect- ed and used as the basis for art making.

Szekely (1994) redefined the hunter/gatherer metaphor as the mod- em shopper. This approach represents learning through direct encounters with life, but life understood at a partic- ular moment in time, taken at face value. It is community decontextualized, community as the largest art supply store, an immediate source of interest- ing objects, stories, and experiences from which popular art and commercial products are acquired.

LEARNING ABOUT: THE DETECTIVE ROLE

The second approach to community- based art education, rooted in multicultural education (Sleeter & Grant, 1988; Banks, 1993), is thoroughly contextual- ized. In this mode, students go out to explore the historical and human contexts of their own communities. Like multicultural education, this approach

Students soon learned that the major

figures in the town's history were their own

grandparents and great-grandparents.

implies an opening of the traditional fine arts canon to celebrate diversity through a variety of art forms, including local home crafts and applied arts (Katter, 1995). The central question becomes, "What is this community about, and how did it come to be this way?" Students play the role of detective or researcher as they study the historical origins and present configurations of their local community, its arts, occupations, and celebrations.

Community members are drawn into arts classrooms as artists, facilita- tors, and curriculum developers.

Above: Students stringing and tuning their home-made

mountain dulcumers. Photo by Theresa Marche

Right: On a walking tour of the old Stinesville quarries with local historian, Ron Baldwin. Photo by Theresa

Marche

Respect for a variety of lifestyles, con- cern for human rights, and empower- ment of all participating groups characterize this form of community- based art education.

ACTING UPON: THE SOCIAL ACTIVIST ROLE

In a third approach to community- based art education, the concept of

I ART EDUCATION / MAY 1998



community is expanded beyond human contexts to include the natural environment (Blandy & Hoffman, 1993; Marschalek, 1989). Students become social activists and community plan- ners who act upon both human and natural worlds in response to the question, "How can this community exist in har- mony with itself and the natural world?" Students study architecture, land use, social/cultural interactions, and a wide range of environmental sciences. In this approach, the environment/community becomes the context for learning, as students are encouraged to develop a sense of place and steward- ship for that place.

LOOKING INWARD-SCHOOL tion. Elementary art teachers, in partic- COMMUNITIES AND RELATIONSHIPS

A related, but different, approach to community-based art education involves looking inward to discover and build school communities. Mims and Lankford (1995) painted a dismal pic- ture of the world art teachers inhabit; a world characterized by time pressures, physical and mental exhaustion, limited working space, lack of respect for art education within the school curriculum, and most devastating of all, isola-

ular, have been identified as the most neglected professionals in the work- force (May, 1994; Mims & Lankford, 1995).

To relieve their isolation, teachers (and especially art teachers) should create caring, committed, supportive, professional communities in which they can share stories and develop communicative virtues (May, 1994). Administrators, supervisory personnel, teachers, and support staff should come to understand the culture of the school and work to promote collabora-

MAY 1998 / ART EDUCATION



tion among all concerned parties (Fullan, 1993).

It is important that students also develop a sense of community, based upon habits and skills of collaboration (Fullan, 1993). We must create a community of learners who feel personally connected in caring, supportive, stable relationships, engaged in and committed to everyone's growth and construc- tive learning through a challenging curriculum of significant inquiry (Lewis, Schaps, & Watson, 1996). In the following example, outward- and inward-looking approaches acted in concert to bring about change in the art program of a rural Indiana school.

STINESVILLE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND PROJECT ARTS

Project ARTS (Arts for Rural Teachers and Students) was a 3-year demonstration project directed by Gilbert Clark and Enid Zimmerman, based at Indiana University, Bloomington, and funded by a Jacob Javits project development grant through the United States Department of Education. The project, a three-state consortium involving seven elementary site schools, was directed toward meeting the needs of multi-ethnic, rural, gifted/talented visual and performing arts students. Involvement of parents and other community members was a goal of this project. Project activities in each state were coordinated through the Project ARTS office at Indiana University, where I served as project coordinator and Indiana site director.

The grant activities timeline called for organization and development of appropriate identification instruments in 1993-94, the project's first year. When one of the original Indiana schools expe- rienced difficulties and declined further

participation in the grant, administrators and teachers at nearby Stinesville Elementary School were contacted and agreed to participate. Due to this late beginning, however, Stinesville lagged behind the grant's time schedule.

The town of Stinesville is located in the rugged hills of southern Indiana, where Jack's Defeat Creek cuts through steep outcrops of pure Salem limestone. With the arrival of the railroad in 1856, stone quarrying became a source of local prosperity. But after a 1916 fire destroyed its cutting mill,

Historical research and Stinesville's lime-

scriptwriting became stone industry intense as the perfor- went into decline

and the town mance date neared. to began to disap-

Photo by Theresa Marche pear. Statewide

movements toward consolidation after World War II threatened to eliminate the local school, but were successfully resisted. Stinesville Elementary School survived

to become the small connnunity's focus.

Five adjoining, century-old limestone- fronted buildings are all that remain of Stinesville's once-thriving downtown area. The old Stinesville Mercantile, now Summit's Grocery, occupies one end of the row, but other buildings are simply empty shells, with roofs or floors miss- ing. This collective structure, listed on both state and national historic registers, was cited as one of the Indiana Historic Landmarks Foundation's ten most- endangered landmarks.

GETTING STARTED-AWESOME ARCHITECTURE DAY

During the project's second year (1994-95), high-ability visual arts students were identified, and differentiat- ed curricula were developed and implemented. It was my first year with ProjectARTS. As Indiana site director, I was concerned about the difficulties encountered at Stinesville Elementary. An art teacher, working essentially alone, was attempting to implement the

_| ART EDUCATION / MAY 1998



gifted arts program on an after-school schedule, and by January she informed me in frustration that she could not continue participating in the grant.

After meeting with the district's gifted/talented coordinator, we decided to give ProjectARTS one more try. Ateam was assembled consisting of Stinesville's teacher of the gifted, music teacher, and art teacher, and the district coordinator of gifted/talented, who had a background in dance.

At the time, Stinesville Elementary School was undergoing construction of

a new addition, with opening slated for May 1995. A study of architecture seemed timely and appropriate. The art teacher had completed a unit overview of major features and historical devel- opments in world architecture, although study of local architecture had not yet materialized.

The new team chose to initiate their own 8-week pilot architecture project. This project, viewed by teachers as a short term, achieveable goal, was con- cretely defined, and represented a

change from existing conditions. As such, it was an effective tool for school community-building (Henson, 1996). Stinesville's gifted teacher decided to incorporate ProjectARTS into her annual student "passion projects," as an assigned theme on community history instead of the usual free choice. This allowed her to focus on another trou- bling issue at the school.

For decades, Stinesville's basketball teams competed under the title "Quarry Lads and Lassies." However, in 1995, the elementary school stu-

dents, dissatis- fied and a bit embarrassed by the title, asked for a change to something more common, like "Cowboys," or

Relaxing after the performance on the steps of the Monroe County Historical

Museum, Bloomington, Indiana. Photo by Theresa March6

'Tigers." Community elders were dismayed and disheartened at the students' desires to sever connections

with past history. Discussion of these events early in the Project ARTS community history projects led the gifted teacher to challenge students to discover a reason for pride in being "Quarry Lads and Lassies."

Work began with presentations by two amateur historians, a visit by the town's two oldest citizens, and a walk to the local cemetery. A brainstorming session resulted in a list of five topics to be pursued. Working in the school library, students soon realized that standard references, such as encyclo- pedias, would not suffice, and they would have to find alternative sources that included family members, old year- books, and county historical society archives. The school librarian provided a mimeographed copy of the 1958 Stinesville Centennial Booklet and the school cook taught students the old high school fight song.

Students wrote to the Indiana Limestone Institute in Bedford and downloaded files on limestone geology and quarrying from the Internet. Family photo albums and home videos provided visual information. Old news- paper clippings described a fire that destroyed the old high school building in 1935. Students soon learned that the major figures in the town's history were their own grandparents and great- grandparents.

Work that began in mid-March 1995 resulted in an all-school presentation, Awesome Architecture Day, to coin- cide with opening the new school addition. Groups of parents, administrators, invited guests, and every student in the school toured four rooms that dis- played aspects of the architecture unit. First, they viewed a series of vignettes on the history of Stinesville acted out by Project ARTS students, complete with music, costuming, lighting, props, and special effects. Audiences then watched square dancing accompanied




by folksongs, entertainment of the sort that early residents might have provided for themselves. At a third stop, students in a creative movement class formed columns, arches, peaks, and buttresses to musical accompaniment. Finally, visual arts students presented their work on world architecture and local historic landmarks. So successful was this pilot program that those involved elected to continue in the same vein for another year.

CONTINUING RESEARCH- STINESVILLE, THE TOWN STONE BUILT

Teachers who met to plan the 1995- 96 schedule included three from the previous year plus a newly hired music teacher. While teachers met formally with the district gifted/talented coordinator and with me as site director for Project ARTS, they also found opportunities for informal gatherings before and after school or during lunchtime when they would eat together. We dis- covered that powerful tools for relation- ship- and community-building were informal meetings, such as socializing over a meal in a noninstitutional situation, usually a team member's home.

Seventeen fifth-grade students were identified as potentially gifted/talented in academics, art, or music using locally devised measures. This group of inde- pendent, energetic, high-ability learners included some with a history of competitive, uncooperative, and mildly- aggressive behaviors. Starting in September 1995, one hour each week was devoted to building group social skills through sharing interests and concerns. Students established rules of courtesy during this hour that eventual- ly carried over to other school situation. By the time intensive historical research was underway, the group had

ceased bickering among themselves, and teachers began to notice growing cohesiveness and cooperation.

Investigation of Stinesville's history began with its original Native American inhabitants. Avisit to the log cabin home of a local Shawnee author and historian opened the year's activities; students also made natural dyes from locally available plants.

Music and art activities overlapped

as students constructed and learned to play their own mountain dulcimers. The school's at-risk specialist, an early- music enthusiast, volunteered to help with dulcimer instruction and accompanied the group as they visited a local instrument maker.

A husband-wife team of local historians led students on a walking tour of the town, investigating architectural features of the Stinesville Mercantile building, discovering the site of the old train station, and interpreting remnants of the ruined cutting mill before following railroad track beds to the aban- doned limestone quarries. Students traced graffiti carved into quarry walls by their grandparents once employed there, and examined the fire chamber and chimney of the steam boiler that powered quarry and mill equipment. Standing in the quiet autumn woods, they tried to imagine the cacophony of steam whistles, hammers, and cutting

machines that once filled their valley. From studying traditional quilt pat-

terns, visual arts students created geo- metric designs with fabric stencils, transferred drawings of local scenes to cloth through a sun-photo process, and added computer-generated text. These were sewn together to create a Stinesville "story quilt."

During spring semester 1996, students, teachers, aides, and interested

community members began pulling all these works together into a coherent performance and an art exhibition to be presented at the Monroe County Historical Museum. Building on research gathered the previous year, a student committee began writing a script, parts were assigned, and more research followed.

A panel of historians, town elders, and retired schoolteachers was inter- viewed by students anxious to present accurate information about their char- acters. Personal artifacts enriched the session. Panel members followed students' progress through the rest of the year. A fourth-grade teacher volunteered to help students choreograph dance routines, working during lunch hours and recess periods.

Students consulted the Department of Geology at Indiana University of information on local limestone forma- tions. Association with the county historical museum resulted in placement of a large display case in the school.

m ART EDUCATION / MAY 1998

During the process of looking outward, Stinesville's student-and-teacher com-

munity built ever-widening connections with their town and county.



The first exhibit, available for the entire school, included fossil crinoids, brachiopods, and other Paleozoic marine creatures that formed the limestone foundation of Stinesville's economy.

By the time the art show and program were presented, the original group of three teachers had swelled to include additional teachers, parents, historians, and community members, as well as the historical museum staff. The program entitled Stinesville, the Town Stone Built featured the great Shawnee chiefTecumseh, Gen. William Henry Harrison, town founder Eusebius Stine, surveyor John J. Poynter, "big Dave" van Buskirk (the tallest man in the Union Army), and AuntJane Staley, who taught in Stinesville for 67 consecutive years. Folk melodies on dulcimers announced the arrival of French and Scotch-Irish settlers. Brachiopods and crinoids danced, quarry workers took a break and pitied the cutters in the mill, "eatin' dust, breathin' dust, just livin' in dust" The program ended with a list of many national monuments and buildings which were fashioned out of Stinesville's limestone. Finally, the 17 students linked arms and proudly pro- claimed, "Stinesville is still the town that stone built, and so are we. We are the Quarry Lads and Lassies of the '90s."

CONCLUSIONS Work in Project ARTS demonstrat-

ed that collaborative creation of art pro- vides students with inward-looking opportunities for practicing dialogue, cooperation, communication, and con- flict resolution skills. In numerous con- tacts with the overall student body at Stinesville Elementary, students in Project ARTS expanded their community to encompass the entire school.

During the process of looking outward, Stinesville's student-and-teacher

community built ever-widening connections with their town and county. In this way, students were connected to the local environment, and their work was linked to a wider social good, namely, preservation, communication, and appreciation of their community's history. Students took up many roles, including those of detective and hunter-gatherer. In the end, they also began playing out the social activist role as they communicated their new-found town pride to other members of the Stinesville community.

While positive effects on the Stinesville students were readily appar- ent, surprises came after their work was presented to the public. Older community members smiled with gratifica- tion to see their stories honored. Some reported a strange sensation upon see- ing a fifth-grade student portray her own grandmother with uncanny accu- racy in speech and dress. it was as if their old friend had returned to life. Younger parents marveled that they had entirely missed the history of the town in which they had lived their lives. Encore preformances were requested at community celebrations the following summer.

Teachers learned important lessons as well. The art teacher concluded that, "If I want to make any change around here, I can't do it alone." With educational innovation dependent upon a team approach, new programs are less vulnerable to effects of personnel changes. Stinesville's experience also highlights the impact of seemingly small decisions, such as choosing to focus on local culture in the arts curriculum. Like a pebble thrown into a pond, effects of this decision rippled outward to the community and then reflected back again, inward to the

school community, creating an ever- changing pattern of connections and personal relationships that enriched all who were involved.

Theresa Marche is Assistant Professor of art education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

REFERENCES Banks, J. A. (1993). Approaches to multicultur-

al curriculum reform. In J. A. Banks & C. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (2nd ed.) (pp. 195- 214). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Blandy, D., & Hoffman, E. (1993). Toward an art education of place. Studies in Art Education, 35(1), 22-33.

Fullan, M. (1993). Changeforces: Probing the depths of educational reform. New York: Falmer Press.

Henson, K (1996). Why curriculum development needs reforming. Educational Horizons, 74(4), 157-168.

Katter, E. (1995). Multicultural connections, craft and community. Art Education, 49(1), 9-13.

Lewis, C. C., Schaps, E., & Watson, M. S. (1996). The caring classroom's academic edge. Educational Leadership, 54(1), 16-21.

London, P. (1994). Step outside: Community- based art education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Marschalek, D. (1989). A new approach to curriculum development in environmental design. Art Education, 42(4), 8-17.

May, W. T. (1994). The tie that binds: Reconstructing ourselves in institutional contexts. Studies in Art Education, 35(3),135-148.

Mims, S. K, & Lankford, E. L (1995). Time, money, and the new art education: A nationwide investigation. Studies in Art Education, 36(7), 84-95.

Neperud, R (1995). Texture of community: An environmental design education. In R Neperud (Ed.), Context, content, and community in art education (pp. 222-247). New York: Teachers College Press.

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Community, Art and Culture || Looking Outward, Looking In: Community in Art Education