ART21 Educators Lab

lab•o•ra•to•ry ˈlabrəˌtôrē / noun

a room or building equipped for scientific experiments, research, or teaching.

The Creative Chemistries’ Educators Lab was an open space that welcomed participants to share artistic and educational methods, and interact with ART21 Educators who were stationed there throughout the event. ART21 Educators presented teaching strategies and resources that participants were encouraged to explore.

The Lab included a Periodic Table of Contemporary Artists where participants were invited to write down names of living artists that matched the shorthand for elements in the Periodic Table of Elements.

It also featured a Feedback Line on which participants were encouraged to write down their comments and thoughts, beginning with what they hoped to get out of Creative Chemistries upon arrival, and ending with what they took away from the event as a whole. Comments were written on green paper, questions on red, responses from speakers at the event on pink, and other’s responses on orange.

Strung across the back of the Lab were three rows of Paper Prayers, small bookmark-shaped artworks created by students at Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario. The works originated in a Japanese tradition in which contributors are asked to anonymously visualize a wish, hope or prayer. Here the children were wishing for heightened skills in sewing, art making and writing. In Japan the small pieces of paper, or tanzaku, would be tied to a tree, and sent off into the world.

These Paper Prayers were adapted by the Art Gallery of Ontario to raise AIDS awareness. The works created by students and volunteers are released into the community in exchange for donations to education initiatives at local HIV/AIDS Network facilities, and popup booths on World AIDS Day, December 1^st.

On a computer screen in the Educators Lab, a collection of best practices from ART21 Educators was projected, grouped generally by students’ age. The education strategies documented in videos, handouts and photos, examined the ways artists think and work and how artistic practices can be integrated and transformed in the classroom. Lab visitors could scroll through information and find challenges, inspiration, classroom examples and lesson plans.

The facilitators for the ART21 Educators Lab were Alyssa Greenberg, Cathy Karp, Cheryl Vernick, Don Ball, Hugo Rojas, Jeannine Bardo, Matt Garza, Rebecca Mir, and Tricia Fitzpatrick.

Special thanks to Don Ball for organizing the ART21 Educators Lab.