Category: Liberal Arts

This is a federally granted project pertaining to the program arts in education model development and dissemination grant. Its goal is to increase student achievement in Literacy and Math through a project-based curriculum centered on Studio Thinking Habits of Mind and art into Reading, Language Arts and Math subject areas. The project site is Bruce-Guadalupe Community School (BGCS), a K3-8th grade University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee charter school located in the near south side of Green Bay, WI. The project has five objectives:

1. Improve students performance in Math and Language through art
2. Improve students studio practice
3. Improve teachers skills on curriculum integration
4. Improve students’ understanding of cultural arts
5. The project follows a pseudo-experimental methodology that includes retracing and interpreting existing data of MAP tests, clinic observations of instruction and student work directed by rubrics, and teachers’ journal

Tasks and Responsibilities

• Students will participate in teacher-clinics and will participate with teachers at BGCS in parallel curriculum planning
• Students will provide instructional support to BGCS teachers during the implementation of project during Fall 2011
• Students will help in the preparation of lessons
• Students will participate in the process of reflection by taking fieldnotes in a journal
• Students will help in the assessment of BGCS

The 2 main objectives of the Art Cycle Milwaukee project are to:

1. Design and build a mobile art making platform that is bicycle-based.
2. Develop appropriate performance programming to take this art making into public space in Milwaukee

We have already branded the project and have an initial website up and running at www.artcyclemke.com. .

Tasks and Responsibilities

1. Research of modified bicycles, specifically richshaws and other 3-wheeled bicycles
2. Designing the modular art stations for metal work, ceramics and print-making that will attach to this bicycle
3. Welding and construction of the bicycle and the 3 modular work stations
4. Researching the Milwaukee bicycle culture and the community art events scene
5. Develop branding materials for the Art Cycle project including a logo and mission statement
6. Building a social network for the Art Cycle project to schedule public performances
7. Participate in public interactive events riding and creating art in the city of Milwaukee

This project will explore designing, testing, making and using ceramic vessels as underground and above-ground water retention and dispersal devices. To be applied for use in urban gardens where water conservation is a concern and water application and dispersal could be regulated to gain better results for food production.

The ultimate goal would be to devise a system of making and teaching in order to be able to deliver these skills to urban farmers to build and utilize these water conservation devices using local clays and making and firing on site.

Tasks and Responsibilities

Students would be asked to:

1. Design, develop, and test clay bodies for use in producing in project.
2. Design and test forms for vessels that would best meet criteria of water retention/dispersal.
3. Design and develop methods of production of vessels that can be customized to fit specific needs of gardens needs and crops desired to be grown.
4. Design and develop methods and tools to measure and test devices efficacy in the field.
5. Develop ideas and strategies for on-site production methods.
6. Develop format and structure to teach community participants how to produce their own systems

The project examines three overlapping areas upon which notions of loyalty were articulated: that of the state (patriotism), the family (conjugal loyalty), and the economy (consumer loyalty). In studying various narratives — literary, cultural, economic, and political — that circulated across the imperial circuit, I consider how such narratives mediate the paradoxical conjunction of loyalty with modernity.