Submitted by: Rebecca Field
School: Douglas Freeman High School
Summary
Students will learn about the architectural, urban, rural, and human history of Henrico County and the greater Richmond area to find out how art and history interact in their local environment. Many of the students are high school seniors and are about to leave their homes for the first time. This project asks them to reflect upon their own experiences while finding out more about the place where they grew up. In research teams, students will research Henrico County historic sites, famous architecture, and county and city population statistics. Through research and site visits, they will gather visual and statistical information about rural and community history, educational history, immigration history, and the civil rights movement, in locations in and around Richmond. Using digital media, students will create an image that integrates learned knowledge and reflections about the place where they live and create a colligraph, a type of print, using a printing press. Students will create a blog to post their finished work and will ask other students in Henrico County to post artwork in celebration of Henrico County’s 400th anniversary.
TIPC Ratings
Ideal/Target: Students are given choices to gather information in many different ways digitally, looking at photo archives, by making site visits, interviewing individuals, taking photographs, gaining information from a guest speaker, and looking at artwork. They decide upon the information they will collect and reflect upon the best way to find that information.
Ideal/Target: Students work in teams to gather information, realizing that artists exist as a community. They reflect on their own work, but they gather information together so that they can see how they can collect research that benefits a team of people and can still adapt it to their own artistic vision. After their individual work is done, they come together to write their blog entries; as each member of the team now has a personal connection to the subject. Students invite other members of the educational community to communicate their ideas and visual connections to the place that they are growing up. This creates an enviroment and topics for many people to collaborate and respond to posts, critique work, and eloborate on the vision provided.
Ideal/Target: Students are asked to synthesize information collected from many different sources into a visually and emotionally charged piece of artwork. They are asked to adapt the research process to their own interests, and transform objective information into a subjective piece of artwork.
Ideal/Target: Students have created pieces of artwork that are entirely original that reflect their own place in the community. Their artwork will convey their own thoughts and views of place, but as a whole, will form a body of work that reflects a community of artists. Their display of their art and ideas on a blog will create an innovative place to share and reflect on ideas and artwork about Henrico County from around the community.
Student Artifact
