ASU ArtSpace @ Academy of Excellence: Week Six

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Week Six

This week we continued preparing for our final project by discussing what the future of Phoenix can be. The students brainstormed all of the different things that make up a city using the categories: Live, Work, Play, Connect, and Consume. We explored these concepts through creative movement and discussed which were the most important for our city. Students chose things like shelters, apartments, fire and police stations, media centers, farmers' markets and parks. Then each of them created the basic shape of one of these and decided together how they should be placed on the map. What places should be located near each other? Did they need privacy or would they benefit from being near a main road? Should some of the residential be given views to the canal? It is a discussion we plan to continue in the upcoming weeks. Our map is now displayed in the cafeteria for the entire school to enjoy.
Most importantly, we talked about our purpose. Each of us has the ability to change the world! How? One voice in one room that changes one city that influences the entire state that then effects the nation and finally makes a difference in the world. That's how! And we hope to challenge this very idea in the classroom through the design of our very own Phoenix of the future. We're fired up! We're ready to go!!

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About the Instructors

Adam Davie is a sixth year, Master's of Architecture graduate student at Arizona State University. He grew up in Sandusky, Ohio and graduated from the Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. Adam has studied Architecture in Paris, Italy, and the Netherlands. He has previously taught Artspace as well as Architecture at ASU. His other interests include photography, music basketball, tennis, sketching, and hiking.

Ben Dumbauld is completing a M.A. in Ethnomusicology at Arizona State University, researching music-making in the Chinese community at Arizona. A native of Phoenix, he recieved a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Performance at ASU, and has performed with many of the leading orchestras, choirs, operas, and Musical Theater companies in Arizona. He is also a private music instructor and English tutor.

Artspace Theme

TIME

Few things are harder to understand than time; pleasantly then, time and space allow for educational and creative experiences to play off one another. Ironically, often youth, who have experienced the least amount of actual lived time, understand it best. This is certainly true today: a typical ten year olds vocabulary includes the phrases “real-time” and “virtual reality.” This theme draws from young people’s strengths to create learning environments for example, that familiarize them with classroom skills like linear time where history and science meet on maps and planets. It helps students see how the sounds and audible noises in our everyday lives relate and convey meaning. These lessons allow parents to see how and why a typical student today uses multiple media simultaneously.

About ArtSpace

ASU ArtSpace is a transdiciplinary arts and design afterschool serving the Phoenix area and establishing a new model of arts educational experience aiming to ensure that its students are self-confident, successful in school and proactive in making a positive impact in their community. ArtSpace was launched in Fall 2008 by a partnership between the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture and the Arizona Department of Education. The ASU ArtSpace program places graduate students from all Schools within the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at eligible schools to provide transdiciplinary programming focused upon their disciplines and thesis. The graduate students design their own transdisciplinary curriculum in teams of two based upon a global theme such as Time, Place, Communication or Storytelling under the guidance of Melissa McGurgan, the ArtSpace Program Coordinator.

ArtSpace classrooms are treated as creative spaces where students are exposed to a multitude of artforms, skills and collaborative processes and the graduate student instructors are able to test and develop experimental teaching methods, techniques and learning processes incorporating art, design and technology. The pilot semester of ASU ArtSpace took place in Fall 2008 and is now serving 12 schools during the 2009-2010 school year. The ASU ArtSpace program exemplifies the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s charge for universities to form partnerships with local school districts and create a new generation of teachers while establishing ASU as an accessible educational entity which embraces new thinking and approaches to art and design to hundreds of children, families, educators and communities throughout the Valley.