We Live, We Learn, We’re all in this together. REMAP: Collaborative and Community Driven Learning

REMAP is a collaborative multi-disciplinary art project, conceived by Anna Adler, Julia Rooney, and Corinne Cappelletti after volunteering at some of New York’s homeless shelters during More Art’s Engaging Artists fellowship program.

The goal of the project was to create a mutual partnership between the homeless and formerly homeless residents of the city through various modes of social and physical interaction (such as art making, cooking, and somatic movement exercises).

This took place during several workshops where both homeless and formerly homeless individuals discussed their personal experiences living in New York City (whether in homes, shelters, or on the streets or subways) and what it means to belong to a place, to travel within that place, or to be displaced from a place you call home. Participants mapped out their various and diverse paths in their lives. In doing so, they discovered a strong sense of belonging to a community and claiming New York City as home.

Learning is best achieved when the teacher/facilitator (in this case the three artists) and the students/participants are in collaboration and there isn’t an authoritarian separation of power. Learners come into the educational setting with prior knowledge and experience, which a good teacher will help them to expand upon in new and unique ways. In this manner, education can have profound results for social change. Dewey (1897) wrote that “education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”  REMAP is an example of critical pedagogy, where the artists employed instructional scaffolding techniques (compelling guidelines, resources and materials, advice, modeling a task, and inspirational ‘coaching’, to name a few), which gave the participants autonomy and confidence to empower themselves and each other in a democratic environment.

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Notes:

Dewey, J (1897). My Pedagogic Creed. New York and Chicago: E.L. Kellog & Co.

Social and Emotional Learning – Our Public Space, our Personal Experience Pt. II

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection 2012, Union Square, New York, NY. Courtesy of More Art

Krzystof Wodiczko’s artistic practice transforms public spaces into sites of collective memory and historical memorialization. He has worked with diverse populations including the homeless, war veterans, and victims of global atrocities such as Hiroshima. Wodiczko’s work is often temporal and doesn’t physically alter the space. Rather, he creates a metaphysical alteration of our perception of events and public spaces by projecting poignant imagery and narratives directly on well known buildings, statues, or other iconic structures in urban environments. His installations are largely politically charged and powerfully engage the viewers to reflect on their own trauma and relationship to both past and current events.

For example, Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, comprised of videos of fourteen U.S. Veterans talking about the effects that going to war has had on them. Wodiczko projected the video on the statue of Abraham Lincoln in Union Square so that each participant’s image embodied the form of the sixteenth President.

Wodiczko’s work presents a great opportunity for educators to discuss the personal ramifications of historical events and iconic sites. Public art works such as Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection supports social and emotional learning (SEL) because it shapes social awareness, self awareness, and relationship skills by bringing a diverse population together inside the park to share in a moment of empathy. In making these poignant projects, Wodiczko relies on a strong collaborative relationship built on trust and engagement from both the subjects of his work and the viewers. Another major aspect of Wodiczko’s work is bringing an awareness and contemplation of the social and emotional connections we have to public spaces. In conjunction with Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, More Art developed a curriculum for middle school classrooms that explored the historical and contemporary functions of Union Square and the role of public spaces within the community at large.