1. Art | Activism Art + Activism = Art Activism?

2. What do you immediately think of when you hear the word ART?
On a white board or chalk board write down students answers. 1-3 minutes, quick answers so you are focusing on their most prevailing thoughts.

4. What else can be considered art?

5. (layered images appear by clicking though)
Pottery, wood working and making instruments, propaganda posters, spoken word, dance, knitting (Anthony Anderson’s grandma taught him how to knit), fashion (Kyemah McEntyre designed her own prom dress), Found object (Commemorative Headdress of Her Journey Beyond Heaven By Kenya Robinson)
It is about designing and crafting experience through our senses. What are some of the senses we covered? Visual, Auditory (spoken word), Tactile (feel the guitar)

6. What is Activism?
Again go to the chalk board and write students responses. If they are struggling to come up with an answer, ask who one of the most important activists of the civil rights moment was. Once someone says MLK go to the next slide and continue the line of questioning with Martin Luther King Jr as a visual cue and context for the word.

7. Focus on the importance of Change with Activism.
He believed in making change through words, demonstrations, and actions.
What are some issues of political, social, or economic importance to you and your community? (On white board write out student answers)

12. What is Art Activism?
Art activism is creating an aesthetic experience the symbolically addresses an issue.

13. Wow. This is a powerful image.
What is the photographer doing Physically to help the boy? What is he doing to help the cause by making that photograph?
While MLK was doing physical and actual change, he recognized the importance of symbolic change and the power of art activism. The NAACP very intelligently always made sure to have photographers and reporters present whenever possible. One photographer later wrote about how MLK would instruct them never to interne no matter how hard it was to not help because their mission was to capture the image and that image would do more to help the cause.

14. Student Questions:
Describe what you see in this image. What do the clothes make you think of? How does the room feel? Where do you think the clothes came from?
Questions for Students after explaining the image:
What direct good is this exhibition doing? Is it feeding/homing/caring for refugees?
What symbolic good is it doing? (Giving a voice to the unknown and over looked. Visually confronting
Ai Weiwei’s exhibition entitled ‘laundromat’, which focuses on the refugee crisis, opened on November 5 at New York’s Deitch Projects in SoHo.
Ai Weiwei has Visited More than 20 Refugee Camps. He gathered what refugees left behind at the Greek-Macedonian border, which mostly consisted of clothing and shoes.
He carefully washed all the clothes, blankets and shoes in his Berlin studio, ironing them, scraping off any mud or dirty residues. The exhibition meticulously displays rows and collections of the 2,046 cleaned off items on hangers and racks, along with photos of his documentation of the refugee camps.

16. Has anyone ever heard of the AID quilt before?

17. In your sketchbook write out what things in your life and world do you want to see changed?
Think BIG and little
If there is time share with the class, collect at end of class to lead discussion next week.