I attended the Alliance for Arts Education in Manitoba conference today, and it was really great to get out of the school(s), and see some really great presenters, and just be re inspired about why arts education is important. I had this fear when signing up to go that there would be more of a focus on Drama or Music, and that actual art-making would be a minor part of the conference(I'm not quite sure why I thought that might happen, maybe because that was my experience in university when they talked about "arts" education). I was pleasantly surprised by a good assortment of disciplines being offered with sessions and thought actually that maybe art education options were a little more widespread at this conference than the other disciplines.
Keynote speakers included:
Tracy Bone-Aboriginal singer/songwriter with a country flavour. Credits include being a 2009 Juno Award Nominee, and recipient of the Aboriginal people's Choice Music Awards 2010.
Kal Barteski-Artist and Blogger with a new art book, "Love Life."(She though perhaps being the most disjointed from arts education was my favourite speaker because of the passion she has for being an artist, and she had a lot of spunk on stage for someone who maybe in the real world would just be classified as "normal". She spoke with what appeared to be no notes, and just used her simple PowerPoint slides to guide her as she spoke. Also I found it inspiring that she was so humble about belonging or not belonging on stage alongside the other speakers.)
Rhian Brynjolson-Art educator, illustrator, author of Teaching Art:A Complete Guide for the Classroom.
Al Simmons-Children's performer extraordinaire, recording artist, and Juno award-winning entertainer.
I attended two workshop sessions. One was lead by artist K.C. Adams whose work has recently been acquired by the National Gallery in Ottawa, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, and also an Aboriginal Gallery in the U.S. She taught us about making wintercounts. Wintercounts are traditionally a history of the people of the plains that show significant events that took place each year. They would have whole lifetimes recorded on one hide using one symbol that represents one year from first snowfall to first snowfall. With that in mind, we made our own versions of wintercounts on brown paper, but instead of recording our whole lifetimes, we focused on just the past year. The image that is included is my work from that workshop. This was an activity that could be adapted to almost any age, depending on how much time you would want to devote to it. I believe K.C. typically would use this project with students in grades 2-4, but it could work with any age; all adults in the room were completely engaged. It reminded me of a life map, or almost a visual journal, where we each put our own faces in the middle and then included at least 4 major events that had occurred in the last year. We had first cut the brown paper into the shape of a hide(I decided to give mine a bird head). I realized that I have had a lot of things happen in just the last 6 months, I didn't even need to go as far back as a full year. I have started two different jobs, worked in 4 different schools, taught a total of 130 high school students and about 70 elementary students, rented and moved from a house in the middle of the Interlake, hired for another job, ventured to Cuba, and just dealt with life.
The afternoon session was spent listening to a few principals and artists from the Artists in the Schools program talk about what they are doing to include arts education in their school in a major way. It was really nice to see and hear about initiatives within schools, and with administration that was completely on board, enthusiastic, and committed to making sure the arts is a part of their students education.
The day ended with students groups sharing about their appreciation for arts programming-there were some high school students attending the conference who had their own sessions separate from the educators.
All in all, I was inspired, I do feel a little recharged as an art teacher, and also even feel more validated as an artist.
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