Creative arts class with Bhutanese Refugee Children
The links to all Work Samples submitted in support of BuildaBridge’s NEA application are contained below. To see the sample, click on the major heading or the work sample link. Detailed descriptions are found on the work sample page.
Our proposed project has two components:
- Training artists from ten national sites, and
- Delivering direct service to children and youth through art-making at those sites
These Samples demonstrate and give evidence of:
- the artistic quality and instructional excellence of our artist teachers,
- the quality of our training,
- the evidence of art learning,
- the quality of art-making of, and its impact on, the young people we serve, and
- give evidence of BuildaBridge’s experience in and ability to carry out the proposed project
Throughout the Samples, we present and illustrate art work from the three themed curricula to be used in the BuildaBridge Model for Art-making project: Arts for Hope, Arts4Peace, and Artology: Earth (or Artology: Water).
This guide provides the descriptions of each of the samples and gives the live links and URL data for each. The samples are listed in a suggested viewing order, but can be viewed by type for convenience, if so desired.
Additional information can be found through other links on the site (SEE RIGHT SIDEBAR). View supplemental information, including Process of Student Art-making & Art Instruction & Training Publications at your discretion.
Movement assessment class in Kenya
Sample 1a. ARTIST INTERACTION WITH STUDENTS
Evidence of arts learning, excellence of artist teachers, quality of the project, ability to carry out project.
Video Part A. Artist Interaction with Students. 5 minutes.
Description: This video features five of BuildaBridge's current teaching artists working in out-of-school-time classes with students: (in order of appearance) Ms. Julia Crawford, Dr. Vivian Nix-Early, Ms. Amber Aasman, Ms. Stevie Neale and Mr. Jamaine Smith. Dr. Nix-Early & Mr. Smith are co-teaching a music and visual arts semester project that involves students learning to play the djembe drum, make their own percussion instruments from recycled materials in the school, and decorate those instruments using meaningful symbols created in the visual arts sessions focused on representational & symbolic art. FULL DESCRIPTION ON PAGE.
The first segment features Ms. Julia Crawford, who is teaching dance in BuildaBridge's 2012-13 Discovery Program.
The second clip features Dr. Nix-Early and middle school students toward the end of their sessions on "Lessons from the Djembe Drum". The students are 6th, 7th and 8th graders who have been specifically selected by the middle-school counselor for participation in the BuildaBridge after-school class because of their backgrounds -- serious cognitive deficits, or abusive or traumatic home lives.
The third segment is of a music class for 5-7 year olds, and a theater class for 8 year old children, all of whom live in one of the poorest barrios in Bogota, Colombia.
The video ends with a return to the Stetson Middle School after-school classes with Dr. Nix-Early & Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is featured working later in the year with the same group of students.
Artology, nature drawing lesson
Sample 1b. TRAINING ARTISTS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL SERVICE WITH CHILDREN
Quality of training and faculty; ability to carry out the project.Video Part B. Training Artists for Cross-Cultural Service with Children (5 minutes). FULL DESCRIPTION ON PAGE.
In the first segment, Dr. Vivian Nix-Early, master trainer and BuildaBridge co-founder, is in the middle of a 7-hour course on Curriculum & Lesson Planning for the 2011-2012 artist teacher cohort.
In the second segment, BuildaBridge master teacher and dancer Magira Ross (known as "Mama Magi" to her young students) teaches Dinkimini, a Jamaican funeral dance of West African origin, to the 2011-2012 cohort of artist teachers & volunteer classroom assistants attending the All Things BuildaBridge (ATB) on-ground training course, August 25, 2011.
In the third segment, Ron Wandering Feather, Native American artist, trains a BuildaBridge group of Artists-on-Call preparing for an Arts for Hope camp with Native American children (middle school) in Montana.
Ron Wandering Feather teaching artists Native American jewelry making skills
Sample 2: IMAGES OF STUDENT ARTWORK (12 images)
Quality of artwork, evidence of arts learning.Description:
This set of images displays artwork by children participating in one or more BuildaBridge programs over the past thee years:
- BuildaBridge’s Discovery after-school arts program for children (7-14 years old) & families living in Philadelphia homeless shelters and transitional housing;
- BuildaBridge’s Arts4Peace that engages the art-making process as a metaphor for teaching concepts and skills in conflict resolution and peacemaking to middle school students.
- BuildaBridge’s summer Artology Program for 4th-8th graders that integrates art, biology and environmental concerns and uses Philadelphia’s parks as a living classroom.
- BuildaBridge Diaspora of Hope (Arts for Hope) camps in Philadelphia, on Indian Reservations in Montana, and International sites.
Artology sculpting class
Sample 3. ART LESSON PLANS & ASSESSMENTS
Quality of teaching, quality of the project, ability to carry out the project
NOTE: For the Art Lesson Plans & Assessments sample, we present a more substantive and complete view of how the arts are included in the curricula. This sample includes three lessons in the visual arts modality from the Arts4Peace curriculum, including a detailed analytic rubric for the National Art Standards outcomes, as well as samples of the assessments that BuildaBridge uses to assess arts learning and improvements on indicators of increased resilience, a critical outcome for working with any vulnerable population. These additional assessments support and lend weight to research demonstrating the impact of art-making on the holistic and longer-term development and success of vulnerable, high-risk students (reference: the NEA-sponsored new report, The Arts & Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies by James Catterall, et. al.).
Description: Art-making to Peacemaking (Arts4Peace) is one of the three arts-based themed curriculums that artist teachers will use in the proposed project. It is an 8–Lesson (10week/30-40 hour) curriculum that engages the art-making process as a metaphor and vehicle for teaching concepts and skills in conflict resolution and peacemaking as well as teaching standards-based art skills to middle school students. The sample is three visual arts lesson plans (13-18 hours) for Lesson 6 of the Arts4Peace curriculum, which focuses on learning about the 5 conflict resolution styles. Students engage in armature mask making and portable scenery canvases to symbolize and communicate the different conflict response styles. National Art Standards are delineated.
The creator of the curriculum is BuildaBridge master teaching artist Leah Samuelson. Ms. Samuelson is a decorative mural and faux-finish painter by trade. Since 2004, her painting has shifted to community mural projects- inspired by getting to know world neighbors and their struggles and strengths. Leah has served as lead teacher for community arts projects on behalf of BuildaBridge in poverty-stricken areas of the Caribbean Islands, has written curriculum for, and led collaborative art experiences for BuildaBridge Philadelphia projects, and serves as faculty for the Institute. Having completed her Master’s degree in Urban Studies: Arts in Transformation at Eastern University, Leah currently lives in Illinois and teaches community art-making at Wheaton University. Leah returns to Philadelphia to participate in BuildaBridge projects and the Institute.
The lesson plan samples are followed by a full analytic rubric for evaluating arts learning along specified national arts standards as well as for additional art knowledge and skills outcomes for the visual arts modality. It is an example of the lesson plans and rubrics for ALL 8 lessons in ALL the art modalities for the Arts4Peace curriculum.
Finally, the art standards rubric is followed by the rubric for the entire Arts4Peace curriculum to give larger context to the art-making. The additional social-emotional assessments in use by BuildaBridge for ALL THREE themed curricula are included after the Curriculum rubric, followed by the citation of several standardized national assessment tools under consideration by BuildaBridge that are recommended by the Partnership for After-School Education in their Afterschool Youth Outcomes Inventory report.
The fourth assessment, The Checklist for Children, is a set of items used in the International Resilience Project as a checklist for perceptions of resilience in children, and will be used as an observational evaluation tool for children consistently attending art classes in this NEA project.
All these assessments are in addition to the authentic art exhibitions & performances that are also indicators of skill-based changes and outcomes.
Authentic assessment lesson
Sample 4. THE BUILDABRIDGE ANNUAL INSTITUTE FOR ARTS IN TRANSFORMATION (IAT)
Quality of training & faculty, expertise, & ability to carry out the projectAfter opening documents, click on arrows on right side of bar to enlarge or on the single page icon on the bar to change to a large single page format.
Description: The Institute is the on-ground & on-line vehicle that will be used to deliver professional development to the artist participants in the proposed project.
This report is written through the eyes of an attendee and young artist, and it delivers pictorial and text summaries of the classes, methods labs and skills courses taught at the Institute. The biographies of the Institute faculty appended at the end of the report demonstrate the range, diversity and experience of our training artists, most of who have been teaching with BuildaBridge for over 5 years.
Institute 2013 Mosaic Skills Class
Sample 5. IMAGES OF ARTISTS’ WORK
Quality of artists & art work; ability to carry out the projectDescription: This sample previews the biographies, artistic accomplishments and the art work of several of BuildaBridge’s artists who teach in one or more BuildaBridge programs.
Teaching artist Pedro Ospino leads a nature walk
