art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

looking in/looking out offered an
opportunity for students in watsonville
community school to create virtual
“windows” on their hopes and
aspirations—a project inspired in part
by dark and windowless hallways
in the school.
case study: california state university, monterey bay 85
The partnership project with Watsonville Community School grew
out of something ruap had learned in its early planning stages: our
community partners had expressed a desire to improve the public
perception of their communities. The community leaders felt that the
vibrant cultural life of their communities was missing from widely held
perceptions, and that the media’s focus was only on negative images—
gang violence, crime, drugs. In response, csumb’s Department of Visual
and Public Art, through ruap, developed a series of projects in which
our community partners could communicate the narratives, imagery,
and critical social issues that they face. csumb ’s Department of Visual
and Public Art’s digital lab was itself created in response to the need
expressed by our community partners for a way to produce visual stories
and responsive media that reflect under-represented communities.
The subject of this case study, the ruap project entitled Looking
In/Looking Out, teamed art students enrolled in a csumb digital mural
class with youth from the Fenix Youth Services who were also attending
Watsonville Community School.
The university art students approached the project with a political
perspective that turned out to be at odds with the priorities of the
young people they were trying to serve. By listening to the youth, the
ruap team was able to adapt their approach so that a project that was
initially controlled by university students ended up transforming and
empowering the community youth. Both the undergraduate and high
school students ultimately overcame their differences to create
“windows” that looked in at the dreams of the youth, and out to the
world they would enter.