art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

86 art / vision / voice
iii. case narrative
voices:
Elizabeth Ross, ruap Coordinator: a 33-year-old white woman who was
raised in a racially and culturally diverse family, graduate of csumb
Johanna Poethig, Professor in csumb is Department of Visual and Public
Art; a nationally known artist whose work in public art and socially engaged
media has been widely recognized
Anna Perez Rick, an undergraduate student in the csumb’s digital mural class
Duane Shima, a tech assistant for the digital mural class
Mike Chavez, Counselor and Teacher, Fenix Youth Services, a gangintervention
youth group
Linda Leigh, Administrator for the Santa Cruz County Office of Education
in charge of Watsonville Community School
When the csumb Digital Media Lab students began their year-long
partnership with Watsonville Community School, Proposition 21,
legislation pending in California, was threatening to further criminalize
youth whose social behavior, dress, or geographical location could be
interpreted as “gang-like.” Many of the university students participating
in the project were gravely concerned that the Watsonville youth—many
of whom had been removed from regular schools for truancy and
behavior problems—would be adversely affected by these new
draconian measures.
The ruap service-learning curriculum that supported the digital
mural class aimed at helping university students understand the issues
of class, race, and violence that contributed to conditions of risk for the
youth. In trying to get to know their partners in this project, csumb
students weighed heavily these conditions and began to envision a bus
shelter image that would educate the larger public to the political
realities of this social justice issue.
The Watsonville youth partners met one-on-one with the csumb
students to begin creating preliminary images. Most themes that
emerged from these meetings focused on gangs, incarceration, stopping
the violence, controlling anger, and hopes for education. In the midst
of the process of designing the image campaign, however, something
began to change, and this change would become the key to achieving
the ruap goal of reciprocity in this project.
Participating youth began regular visits to csumb’s campus to use
the Digital Media Lab, and university students began to visit the youth
at Watsonville. The group continued to pursue their discussions of the
issues of youth anger and hopelessness. With the help of their csumb
partners, the youth wrote expressions of their deep emotions, and the
words tumbled out.