Children’s Global Arts: Visioning the World We Want and
Connecting to the World We Live In

Presented by the Children’s Global Arts Foundation
University of Victoria

This workshop tells the story of the Children Global Arts project which started in 2003 with an exchange of artwork between children in Canada and children in war torn Afghanistan and Iraq based on the theme the ‘World We Want” and now includes arts exchanges with Canadian children and children in India, Chile, South Africa, Belize, Tanzania, Vietnam, Iran, and Nigeria.

The workshop will feature a DVD created to show five lessons created and taught by Canadian teachers to develop Arts based exchanges with children in other countries around the world.  The Children’s Global Arts project uses multiple forms of Arts (pictures, dance, drama, crafts, poetry, music, video), encouraging children from a wide spectrum of cultures around the world to impart images and impressions of the “world we live in” and visions for “the world we want”.  See project website for examples of children’s expressions from around the world – http://www.childrensglobalarts.ca.

This workshop will invite teachers to examine how creating Arts based projects and programs can help to develop ongoing global connections between students and school communities that enables the promotion of global citizenship, social responsibility, cultural understanding, sustainability, democratic society, and peace education.

They provided a Computer, an LCD projector, and speakers.

www.bctf.ca/EEPSA  or www.gvrd.bc.ca/education

Reflections from session

The session went very well.  As can be seen from the photos I set up the display and put out booklets, laminated pictures from Afghanistan and DVD with booklets on separate tables.  During the break between sessions I made a connection with a Sandra Santarossa who has a similar project to the Children’s Global Arts with “Word love World Love” connected to Sri Lanka.  She volunteered to take money for me for DVDs (see picture 4).
At the beginning of the session I surveyed the teachers to see where they came from in relation to school curriculum age levels.  Out of about 40 teachers 2 came from high school, 1 from middle school and then rest from elementary school.  There were only 3 men in the group.
After an introduction to the project and the website I asked participants to choose a visual medium to study (display, DVD, booklets) and to consider the following questions

• “What does the artwork say to you?”
• “How could you use this with your students?”

This resulted in lots of discussion as people circulated.  One teacher shed a tear in relation to the Afghan art.  When I brought the teachers together again I ask them to debrief with a colleagues on the questions.

We then shared some big ideas.  Such as,
“The need to connect children in a meaningful way.” 
“How this project could be a spring board for so many curriculum ideas.”
“How this project could get children to focus on needs rather than wants.”

I then showed the DVD introduction, art analysis, the “Clothsline art” and then the final reflection piece. This then spawned more discussion.  A great point was made about the need to help are students to not speak from the privileged position.  As one teacher commented, in took here 2 years living in Africa to realize that being poor was not a deficit in life.  That poor people can make great lives.  Though we have tried to address this in the video with comments from Gita and Kathy, this is a critical issue.  It was pointed out that being able to view the grade 1 class allowed older students to reflect on that way of seeing the world and could offer a spring board to critique the way from a young age we are socialized to think in a certain privileged way about the rest of the world.  A final comment came from the secondary art teacher (Nicholas Stanger see card nicholasstanger.ca) who showed the Afghan piece of art depicting a terrible battle with babies being slaughtered.  He commented how this one piece could be used as a unit item for high school students to study Afghanistan – “Who drew the picture? What does it show? What did they want to communicate? How can we respond?”

All in all a very successful workshop. 
I wish I could have stayed and mixed with the participants more.

Friends Represented at conference:  Tim Hopper.
12 DVD sold and new friends signed up.