art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

a banner art club student sends a
message to her community.
case study: maryland institute of art 25
cinder By the time spring break came, I was so focused on providing
continuity for the youth by ensuring that the sessions continued
through the break that I didn’t explain to the kids why the mica
students missed two sessions. That was a real mistake on my part.
tree When I got back from spring break, only three or four kids
remained in the program, and they kept asking “Where were you?”
After spring break, the third leader’s intensive course schedule began to
compete with cap for his time, and his already-limited interactions with
the Art Club became nearly nonexistent.
cinder As the semester went on, we heard from him less and less. As a
consequence Mari and Tree started planning more together and
developed a tight bond, perhaps because they understood that if they
were going to pull this out of the bag they were going to need each other.
mari I knew from past cap projects that it’s important to be present on
a regular, consistent basis. The kids need to know that you are truly
present and seeing and listening to what’s going on in their lives.
It was important to me, also. Since I was only [available] one day a week,
I needed to find out what had been going on when I wasn’t there.
Fortunately, Tree was really good at letting me know—but it took
a while [for us to get to that point].
tree We had to say, “We are going to do lots of new and different things,
and we are going to have so much fun,” to pep the kids back up.
We started a superheroes project that began with a discussion about
what they liked and didn’t like about their community. They liked
the fact that they could play football in the league Banner created in
the park. What they didn’t like were prostitutes out on the street.
They didn’t like drugs. They didn’t like trash in the streets. They didn’t
like that people always told them to get out of the street, but they
couldn’t go to parts of the park because they didn’t feel safe or
welcome. They talked about what their neighborhood really is (or could
be) and all the different components of a community. Mari and I then
proposed that each child create a superhero who had the power to
change the things they didn’t like.
Tree brought in an artist friend who creates Batman comic book covers and
also works as a medical illustrator to show the youth some of his own
superhero art and help the kids to create characters that have the power
to change the world for the better.