How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Austin Kleon)

by Austin Kleon

Here's some super awesome wisdom from the author of Newspaper Blackout:

http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

Old Fangs by Adrien Merigeau

Old Fangs from adrien merigeau on Vimeo.

Gorgeous, creepy short film, definitely worth watching.

Arts Explorer #10: Community Arts Project

Aboriginal women and families in the City of Toronto deserve to be noticed and supported! Why are they an invisible population? Where is the community action around the issues they face? How can we become allies to them in our professional lives?

Our group chose to focus on this population because we believe they are undervalued and underserved as inhabitants of this diverse city. We read in the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study (Environics Institute, 2010) that Aboriginal Torontonians seek to become a more visible, better appreciated part of this city. There are several community organizations, like the Native Women's Resource Centre (NWRC) and the Native Canadian Centre, who work to meet the needs of this population, but how engaged are non-Aboriginals? Not engaged enough was our answer.

Click image to enlarge or visit this link for a closer look.

So, we decided to use guerrilla art to make our idea visible and bring it to the forefront. The image at the centre of the visual map was created by an artist friend, who we asked to participate in our project. We also contacted a family support worker at the NWRC, as well as Ryerson professor Peter Menzies, to ask for guidance on our action. This step was especially important given that we are outside of this cultural group.

The image represented our idea and became the visual for our guerrilla art action, which we documented in this video. My art word of the week is space, because I think the negative space in this image conveys how transparent or invisible these families can often be to outsiders.  As Schirrmacher and Fox (2009) write, "negative space is the space left between or surrounding subject matter" (p. 143). Are we paying enough attention or will this space remain blank?

To engage people in the idea, we also created a wiki to offer an opportunity for dialogue and learning. It links back to our visual map and video, provides resources and information, and can be edited and added to by the broader community. In this way, using our own skills and those of our friends, we reached our goal of sparking conversation around the issues faced by urban Aboriginal women and families in the City of Toronto.

I feel that our presentation today went well overall. I like using alternative visual supports (like the Popplet above) to show our thinking process, so I'm glad we could integrate that. I think we also chose a social justice issue that is important to us, and that's a good starting point for creating a project that is meaningful and relevant.

If we had the chance to do it over again, I might try to point out a couple of specific issues faced by urban Aboriginal women and families in Toronto, such as high rates of poverty and low levels of education (Williams, 1997), in order to highlight the urgency of this project. I'd also turn up the volume on our video because the song Rose chose was fantastic but I don't think anyone could hear it!

That being said, I'm glad we did this project and I hope other students in the class will feel interested in learning more about urban Aboriginal families so they can be a support to them as ECEs. We have a very important role to play in their wellbeing but we need to be well-informed, respectful and dedicated to continuous learning. This group of children and families have very specific needs because of a long history of colonization and oppression, and I really think we need to take that into account when considering how Aboriginal children learn and what their families might value.
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References

Environics Institute. (2010). Urban Aboriginal peoples study.

     Toronto: Environics Institute.

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art and creative

     development for young children. Belmont, CA:

     Delmar.

Williams, A. M. (1997). Canadian urban Aboriginals: A focus on

     Aboriginal women in Toronto. The Canadian Journal of Native 

     Studies, 17(1), 75-101. 

Arts Explorer #9: Guerrilla Art

Here's a video documenting the guerrilla art action we planned (though of course, I cannot confirm or deny that we are the ones executing this art action in the video...).


Canadian Aboriginal Women and Families in Toronto from Rose Lugue on Vimeo.

We brought in a talented artist friend to help us think of a powerful visual and decided that postering would be the most effective method for our purposes. We wanted to link this art action to our community arts project, so the poster symbolizes different elements of our message and our thinking: women, children, family, transparency/invisibility, the circle (reminiscent of the unity collage or a medicine wheel), and an urban landscape. My art word of the week is balance because I think this visual really represents an (almost) symmetrical harmony as described by Shirrmacher and Fox (2009) in their definition of the word.

The visual was deliberately displayed without text so that the process of interpreting it would be more open-ended. We wanted people to notice it as they walked by, but be left with a feeling of uncertainty - a need for further exploration as opposed to all questions answered.

Sadly, when I returned to the scene the next day, our poster had fallen down. I wanted to ask a few passersby what they thought about it, or get some shots of people observing the artwork, but I wasn't able to because it was in a lump on the grass. Only the tip of the technicolour CN Tower remained.

Despite this unfortunate ending, I thought this assignment was really exciting. Knowing that the poster didn't stay up only made me want to do so much more of this kind of art! Not that I necessarily had anything to do with this poster action... or intend to engage in any illegal activity in the future... but it feels amazing to come up with a concept or idea, think of a way to communicate it visually, and go out into the street to show it off. I've never been a patient artist and I love anything that allows me to create and prototype ideas relatively quickly, then see how things go and try again. I think street art could be a really good option!

I also think that this kind of creation process would be really great for young children to learn. Trial and error, learning from mistakes, pushing through obstacles. When a child comes up with an idea, why not encourage them to try it out even if it sounds crazy? (Granted, it should be safe...).
If it doesn't go as planned, ask why! What could be changed? Encourage problem-solving and inquiry. That's what I felt street art encouraged me to do, and I think it would be an equally valid process in ECE settings.

And now, I leave you with an amazing piece of work on the Toronto graffiti scene by Ryerson student Char Loro, and a link to some really fantastic street art blogs if you're interested.


GOODBYE GRAFFITI from Char Loro on Vimeo.

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References

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art and creative

     development for young children. Belmont, CA:

     Delmar.

Vi Hart...

... is an absolute hero of visual thinking. She blows my mind. I left mathematics behind a long time ago in this life but I am so happy there are other people out there who enjoy it, since I do have a sneaky feeling it serves some kind of purpose in the world.
What makes me even happier is that there are people like V.H. doing math like this! Yeah!
Check out her whole YouTube channel. So clever.

PS This totally has to do with ECE because she points us to creative ways of teaching complex ideas. Maybe this particular video wouldn't be helpful to show to 4 year olds, but I like that she's pushing math to a place where it's engaging and useful and relevant and stuff.

Creative professional paths

Free workshop tomorrow!

I'm plugging this here because I think creativity means more than painting and dancing in the classroom (although those are essential, for sure.) As ECEs, we can be creative with how we use our skills, our knowledge, our abilities...

We can be kindergarten teachers, speech-language pathologists, art therapists.... but we can also take our awesome ECE know-how and work for ourselves. Start our own projects!

The workshop tomorrow is a joint endeavour between SIFE and the Faculty of Community Services, and it's about innovating and creating our own paths within the caring professions. So, if you dream of doing your own thing, finding funding for a crazy creative idea, making the world a better place, you might consider coming.