the idea: have kids design their own city where every building is an art piece

Today was the first day of my internship at RAW Art Works, a community art center that all others should strive to live up to.  It’s the kind of place that makes you heave a sigh of relieved contentment the moment you walk through the door, even if you’ve never been there before.

Through a series of fortunate events, two years after I first got introduced to RAW during my first course at Lesley University, I’ve found myself back inside this building.  This time, to teach.  While in the mornings I learn the much needed skills of administration, in the afternoons I’ve been asked to design and teach classes through the VanGo! program.  It seems that you can’t work at an art center without getting wrapped into a project that involves a thirteen person van.

For my first project I decided to facilitate the creation of the Art City, inspired in part by my on-going project: The Something City.  Each of the kids made drawings of a building and then collaged them on to cardboard pieces of various sizes.  Then we glued them all to a stick of wood to turn the individual buildings into a group city.  Not only did I work with the kids, I was being observed by one of RAW’s teachers and an interviewee for a position at RAW while also leading/being helped by three teens not all that much younger than I am.

All in all, it was a bit stressful.  I am used to teaching on my own, with no one but the kids to hold me accountable.  But, even if I’m not the only teacher in the room, working with kids still has that power: to completely focus you on one moment, one exchange.  To watch through their eyes as a pile of cardboard and paper scraps turns into their own city.