Innovation was hung by the chimney with care...

Extension of Our Group Think…

Naturally, as we follow the questions and the process we’ve laid out, we diverge into areas that we’ll be exploring later on in our symposium-intensive retreat. But, we keep talking...and here's the result: (Not in order of importance.)

We explored the ideas that we’ll be developing work that align with values of diversity- within art forms, particularly.

A BIG idea that could be explored within the prototyping models is Curation. Becoming a curator? Finding a voice through the curation of ideas and themes?

A BIG idea that could be explored within the prototyping modules is Scaling Deeply into community and schools through the exploration of multi-grade long-term projects that connect students of all grades with community members. Example: students in grade 8 create props to be used in a video project that is directed/recorded by grade 10 students with audio supplied by grade 12 students who will specialize in understanding the intricacies of sound design. 

We want to understand that within each of these prototypes there are value statements created about the art, the artistic process, and the possibilities to scale out, scale up and scale deeper within various art forms or reaching out to incorporate new art forms. This expansion or contraction of a module will be dependant on the objectives set out by the teacher/teaching team/artist and teacher collaboration and the skills/interest of that leadership team. 

We understand that there is value in having the students “prepped” to begin an arts process and we wonder how best that might happen?

Artist mentoring teacher? in person or on-line? Elevated PD- PD that is arts tools based with a specific purpose in mind and creates many points of entry and exciting and relevant sharing of arts skills from artist-educator to teacher.

Artist mentoring Students. Same sort of models as above. 

Shaking up Professional Development for the teachers means scaffolded and relevant arts experiences that may push them to explore and discover more than following a set number of steps to learn a program. We understand the value of the foundations of our art forms and look forward to sharing those foundations with teachers. 

We believe that true creativity comes with the confidence of understanding the process and deciding to “do things differently.”