Music and Art
Though new and innovative my curriculum is an accumulation of previous art curriculums tried and tested throughout universities and eras as well as a unique addition, an ArtJim or ArtGym and a few other twists.
- Firstly, the standard art curriculum is in place in all art universities and collages and high schools. The fundamentals of life drawing can be taught from K-12 with age appropriate materials, themes and guidelines.
Gesture drawing, quick sketches building to longer poses are ideal for young kids.
Beyond life drawing, drawing skills are developed with simple practice of somewhat rote movements and methods including drawing circles that roll over the page and playing with perspective lines and rulers.
- Secondly I wild augment the above with the stand curriculum offered by CEI, a leader in education that I am partnering with on several projects and that they have offered me to use in MSLT Academy
- Gallery in a school:
This is an innovative idea and we would form a gallery in a school composed primarily of 6-9+ young kids with three minimally active tachet helpers.
The kids would learn how to organize a gallery, select for an art show, develop a theme, encourage artists to create, decide on how to hang the work, write a simple statement of the show and have artists do an artist talk and presentation to other children and maybe parents at the seasonal events schools hold.
- The ArtJim. ArtGym
See below: this is in a test run in Yonkers and is a big success.ArtJim
Repair
Train
Joy Join
Imagine Include
Make Manifest
I and hopefully most remember fondly the free time we had to play at the beginning of gym in school.
If you were lucky enough to go to a day or sleep away camp you could associate the feeling you got when you had Free Play or Free Swim; times when you can choose to do whatever you like amongst a myriad of options. I never chose to swim.
An ArtJim is a concept I’ve wanted to develop for over 20 years.
In essence an ArtJim is an artful version of your old school gym or like a carnival as you run excitedly to choose the games to play to garner tickets for toys. We offer no tickers and no stuffed junk.
Our games to play are creative, simple and fun and grow in complexity. They combine individual and group efforts at times much like a team sport might just no head banging, only mindful thinking with the top egg.
Teachers become students and visa versa as highly skilled and experienced artists have micro studio space in an open large space.
The creative cluster would include a compelling mix of a cacophony of choices from painting, drawing, life drawing, collage, ceramics (at a clay bar), sculpture with rocks, found object sculpture, music making with various instruments, performance and motion movement and more.
Everyone, the other teachers, the college kids, the high schoolers and the various artists and interested people in and outside the art world would be invited to engage for free and to learn what they like
Ideally everyone would be inspired by each other and watch and learn and then to do and make and create by seeing and copying without instruction and then by instruction.
A visual art can be learned visually.
Clay Bar Details:
Imagine a bar , no booze for you, just clay to play with and then an artist to combine what we all make as individuals into one masterpiece made by parts shorn without intention of unity but grouped and bringing us together.
In all these projects the students learn up the ladder and as with the above example would then learn to combine individuals work.
The student becomes the teacher.
This is the heart of the Magic Makers, Dream Developers program and will grow a team, a network of student teachers that will grow each other and also fulfill many of the administrative and creative and manual work needed to run a gallery, curate shows and sustain the ArtJim
The ARtJim is an active lab combining artists, artist studios, art opportunities to create and a growing exhibition space being developed to exhibition standards.
The ArtJim is the format for the Arts in Ed program
The freedom to choose engages options, thinking and positive choice for personal growth directed by the individual. This has far longer sticky points and retention as compared to forced learning in a chair with a fixed task directed by a teacher upon a student.
With freedoms like this you become more creative, alive, awake and responsive and you engage your fellow friends, classmates and others in an interactive way that breeds language skills, social skills and of course exercise and health benefits.
