Lesson Three

Community Stepping Stones Message Center

Project: Create a message center for the community and neighborhoods. Students will use suculpture as the medium, and develop a place for members of the community to leave concerns, ideas, and comments. Once or twice a week, the students will check the "mail" left at the center. The sculpture should be inviting and insiring.

Essential Questions:

Enduring Ideas: Create social networks between students and the community. Using sculpture as a vehicle for the students' and artists' voices. Create better social understanding and diversity. Help the students and the community understand, meet, and address concerns about the neighborhood and community. Integrate students and their art into the community.

Essential Questions: How can art be a transformative tool in the communtiy, and make a lasting impression? Will the community take part in developing and maintaining a social dialogue with the students?

Activities: Students will look at artists that have used sculpture to influence the community and society. Students will design and build a message center for the community. It should be inviting, and have a legitimate purpose for delivering messeags and providing answers for the community. All members of the class should help in the building of the sculpture, and should all come together and agree on a design. The message center works by providing a box where students and community members can put their ideas and concerns about the community and neighborhood. The box will be checked a few times a week, and will be maintained through the rest of the school year or class. Future classes will be able to continue this project, and in no way should it be taken down when the class is over. It should create a voice for the students and community. It should bring together opposing forces to create a social dialogue, and correct issues that need to be dealt with. After the class has made the sculpture they should write a short paper on what expectations they have for the project. After the students start to recieve messages, they should work on communicating with the community, with the teachers supervision, and address the subjects that need to community has voiced. In the end the students should be able to say that they have contributed in making their community a better place through art. Art can bridge social divides, and bring people closer together. The message center should live on and the students should carry the knowledge they learned from it well beyond the end of the class. Artists and Resources are provided at the bottom of the blog.

Assessment: Did the student help in designing the community message center? Did they help build the sculpture? Did the student provide a voice for the community and interact with the messages left in the community message center? How well did they understand the concept of changing culture and providing a voice for the community? Did they participate in the dialogue with the community after messages were recieved? In their paper did they understand the concept of creating a social dialogue through the community message center? And did they study previous artist and sculptures with the same aim, in providing a voice for the students and community?

Reflection: I feel the project is important because it creates a social dialogue between the students and the community. It allows a voice for both the students and the community, and gives both parties a chance to enhance and change the community in which they live for the better. Students should come away from this project with a sense of empowerment and inspiration. They can make a change if they put the effort into it, and really make a change in society, the community, and their neighborhood.