Voices of 190


What is the 190 Voices Project?
Our Voices: Our Power in the Pandemic will provide much needed arts-activism education to a 7th and 8th grade art class at E.S.M.T IS 190, a Title 1 school in the Bronx, NY.
This project believes that art plays a crucial role in the education, engagement, and empowerment of middle school students, in particular those who have been highly impacted by the COVID19 pandemic.
Over the course of a combined arts and activism curriculum, students will create a book of their artwork in response to social justice issues that are important to them.
Through the arts and activism curriculum and book creation process, students will develop their artist voices, self-esteem, and engagement in their school community. This is the second year of the project; last year's book publication was a wonderful success and the school reached out to me to ask if we could do it again. I was delighted they enjoyed last year's program and would love to lead this project again!
The primary questions students will investigate throughout the year are:
1) What does my community mean to me?
2) What should people know about my community that they might normally miss?
3) If I could create any change in my neighborhood, what would it be?
These questions are specifically designed to welcome a broad range of artists and thinkers. In last year's addition, we had students respond to these questions via poetry, drawing, collage, and performance. Keeping the discipline of art open allowed a range of students to feel comfortable and confident in participating. Additionally, because many of the students in these classes are English language learners, it was important to have a wide range of creative expressions available to them.