Project Summary:

We want students to work with their hands to create what they dream up in their imaginations. We want students to collaborate face-to-face and bounce ideas off of one another to design and redesign. We want students to feel the joy of creating something by hand that can be seen, touched, and appreciated by others. We want students to feel the boost of self-confidence from persevering to create a finished product that involves old-fashioned time, effort, and creativity.

You can help us make this happen.

This grant builds three comprehensive, mobile, hands-on, creativity labs to ignite the spark of joy and sense of accomplishment in making art. Currently, art materials are housed in the Teacher Workroom with no particular organization. This makes gathering supplies for student and classroom use cumbersome. In addition, there are no carts available to move materials and little space in classrooms dedicated to storing borrowed materials. While we are not short on the actual materials, which are generously provided by our district, the organization and use of the materials would be more effective and frequent with the creation of Mobile Creativity Art Labs.

Mobile Creativity Art Labs will consist of a multifunction mobile workbench, with integrated powerstrips, stocked with materials for creativity such as paints and brushes, various types of art paper, colored pencils, pens, and markers, sewing machines, fabric, felt, bits and baubles, various adhesives and glue guns, a Cricut machine and compatible materials, scissors, paper trimmers, shaped hole punches, and more.

Innovation and Creativity (250max/0)

Providing all-inclusive and organized Mobile Creativity Art Labs for our students gives them all the bits and pieces to inspire creativity and collaboration. With the addition of a few “fancy” items such as the Cricut machines, and having traditional arts and crafts materials at their fingertips, students can get even more innovative in their response to class assignments, projects, and general creative art-making. The Mobile Creativity Art Labs are large enough for a group of students to work together at the workbench and collaborate but small enough to fit easily into a classroom space for the duration of the project.

We are already designing our first project: smART Busy Books. These are interactive, felt books based on picture books for toddlers through Kindergarten aged children. The picture books inspire the designs of the interactive features for the Busy Books. We have a whole team of students collaborating to make these come to life. Some students will work on the graphics, designing the pieces that will be assembled on each page as well as the backgrounds. Some students will work on the engineering of the interactive pieces; designing ways to make pieces move on the pages in ways that reflect the inspiration story. Some of the students will work on assembling the pages for the book and another group of students will work on assembling completed pages to make books. We also have some students designing the marketing aspects of the books for potential sales to raise funds for future materials purchases.

Student Needs/Why it’s Necessary:

Over the last decade, the big push to create “maker spaces” and “maker labs” has been a priority. We helped students tinker, code, and get digital. But being in the classroom during that time, it’s becoming painfully obvious that many of our students no longer use their hands and imaginations to create handmade art. Many students do not have mastery over basic motor skills such as drawing shapes, forming aesthetically pleasing symbols, graphics, and handwriting. The Mobile Creativity Art Labs let the students utilize the skills and knowledge of digital tinkering they already have and reintroduce them to the beauty and benefits of using their hands and imaginations to create art emphasizing hand-made creativity as the priority.

Participation in crafting engages students with much more than just art; it strengthens writing, reading, critical thinking, logic, and general cognitive skills. Creating Art can also be a springboard to increased participation in academics, inspiring students through connections between art and many other disciplines. Students who are interested in art come to realize that it overlaps with history, literature, science, and every other topic under the sun.

Standards:

Based on the California Art Standards for Visual Art:

Students using the  Mobile Creativity Art Labs will begin to generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work together to create and innovate which are

essential life skills that can be developed over time with opportunities to do such. Students will be able to design and experiment with forms, structures, materials, concepts, media, and art-making approaches as a result of having the  Mobile Creativity Art Labs and the equipment housed within. Because students will have access to the labs, they will balance experimentation and safety, freedom, and responsibility while developing and creating artwork. Students will begin to develop excellence through practice and constructive critique to reflect on, revise, and refine work over time. As projects are made, students will use criteria to analyze, select, and curate objects, and artworks for preservation and presentation to the smART Festival. Lastly, individual aesthetic and empathetic awareness developed through engagement with art can and will lead to understanding and appreciation of self, others, the natural world, and constructed environments.

Project Plan (500max/0):

Intro

The overall plan is to create art and creativity stations that easily allow students to design and create together. The stations will be stocked with traditional art and craft materials (supplied through our normal EUSD Stores orders) as well as some special materials purchased through PTA funds. The hope is that some projects can be sold to raise funds for future specialized materials purchases.

Implementation

Once assembled and stocked, the Student Management Team trains teachers and classroom student management teams on the use, care, maintenance, and restocking of Mobile Creativity Art Labs. After that, classes use the labs as much as possible and hopefully utilize the template projects previously made by the Student Management Team. In February, the Student Management Team will advertise requests for submission of creations to the smART Festival. Continued use of the Mobile Creativity Art Labs will take place for the remainder of the year and the Student Management Team and Teacher Advisor will evaluate use and impact in June.

Timeline

October-November: Student Management Team (with the help of Teacher Advisor) writes application and submits to foundation

November-December: Student Management Team (with the help of Teacher Advisor) plans for implementation and designs and creates sample projects to share with teachers and classes to inspire use of Mobile Creativity Art Labs

December: If awarded, attend reception and receive award, write formal thank you letters to foundation, and order from budget sheet

January: Receive equipment, materials, and supplies, student management team assembles labs and stocks materials, provides training to teachers and recruits student teams from each classroom to train how to use, care for, and restock the Mobile Creativity Art Labs.

February: Students in all classes utilize the Mobile Creativity Art Labs and create handmade art. Student teams encourage classes to select (based on criteria) pieces to be showcased at the smART Festival in March.

March: Students in all classes continue to utilize the Mobile Creativity Art Labs. Curate pieces for the smART Festival and present art.

April-June: Students in all classes continue to utilize the Mobile Creativity Art Labs. Student teams continue to restock for future use.

June: Student management team orders supplies for the following year based on use from February – March 2024.

Evaluation

Student Management Team and Teacher Advisor will determine if the Mobile
               Creativity Art Labs have been useful and successful based on the following:

  • Student survey regarding availability and use of Mobile Creativity Art Labs, personal feelings from creating handmade art, and interest in creating future projects
  • Teacher survey regarding availability and use of Mobile Creativity Art Labs, personal feelings from creating handmade art, and interest in creating future projects, how they feel students respond to and engage with Mobile Creativity Art Labs

Lasting Impact:

The major request of this application is for housing of the materials that are readily available to us. Because of this, the longevity of the grant is multiple years versus consumable items that have a short-term duration. The lasting impact of this grant shifts from the material to the affective. Of course, students will be creating tangible items and the grant will certainly help to fund those, but the focus of the impact is on the participation and the interaction and the community building.

Designing and implementing mobile spaces for our students to be creative nurtures and fosters authentic innovation and creativity. Conversations around creating art, the process of designing, the natural problem-solving that happens, and the collaboration between fellow artists when art is being made are things that impact a school’s culture and climate at a deep level. They happen organically and the overall effect is profound and lasting. It is a wonderful feeling to see the look on the students’ faces when they have completed a true work of art. They begin to look forward to creating the next piece and begin designing together long before they have materials in hand. Caring for our school culture through making art together is a beautiful way to nurture relationships, communication, and creativity and ultimately a sense of pride in what we can create together.