What is the 190 Voices Project?

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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.  

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 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!

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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? 

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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.