Organizing to make connections with the community can be overwhelming at times. There is a lot to coordinate and a lot of moving pieces, but the learning that can be done is very beneficial.
The ICA at MECA&D opened its doors to a few local high school classes to explore the exhibit Monitor: surveillance, data, and the new panoptic. It was a pretty heavy topic to initially tackle, but it became clear that the topic of being monitored is one that is very interwoven in the youth of today's lives.
Together with a member of my cohort I executed a collaborative lesson that had about 4 parts.
Part 1: Pre-visit to the high school to introduce the topic of the exhibit and get to know the students.
Part 2: Visit to the ICA. This visit consisted of a general scavenger to encourage exploration of the works, a class discussion at the end, and a 'top secret mission' assigned in secret to each student where they had to gather as much intel on an assigned peer as possible. This mission was revealed to the group during the class discussion.
Part 3: Making activity in Space Gallery. Students were given a prompt to make a mask that conceals their identity but invites being looked at. During and after the making time the students were asked questions to guide making and prompt reflection.
Part 4: Displaying student artwork. My classmate and I coordinated with the school a time to come and set up a display of the student artwork. We created a label, transported, and hung student artwork at their high school.
