North Side Learning Center
Poster Project
Creativity and art have played a significant role in my life for as long as I can remember. From small art projects to storytelling through playing dress-up, my love for a dynamic imagination has helped me in every aspect of my life as I grew up. It has taught me to problem solve in school and in conflicting situations, has given me an outlet to express my thoughts and emotions, and has eventually transformed into a way for me to reflect on myself and my life. My passion for creativity and art has evolved into a love for graphic design and digital manipulation.
Working at the North Side Learning Center, I noticed a lack of integration of technology into the children’s activities and curriculum, which is an aspect of education that has become crucial for a child’s prospering future in today’s society. This type of beneficial education includes the use of computers, tablets, and programs. Even though providing technology would require an immense amount of funding and would take time to become feasible, I thought it would be valuable to expose the students at the North Side Learning Center to technology-based art.
This inspired me to take my passion for art and graphic design, and give the elementary-school girls a taste of technology-based art. This led me to come up with the idea to generate digitized posters with the girl through a process of understanding a concept, brainstorming ideas, sketching it out, and finally transforming their thinking into a graphic piece of art. During my volunteer time, I observed the types of projects they do and how they respond to them. The majority of their activities consist of reading, writing, drawing, and coloring before they are able to unwind and run around the room. These creative methods of self-expression enable the elementary school girls to reflect on books they read and ideas they have. Once I began doing research and came about the article of how art with refugee children serves as a constructive method of art therapy, I became extremely interested in how I could incorporate the aspects I learned about art therapy into my own art project, without turning it into an art therapy project.
In my project, my main objectives were to expose the elementary school girls at the North Side Learning center to different forms of artistic expression, especially technology-based forms, and how to approach an idea or story they want to convey. When approaching this project through a research perspective, I was most intrigued with the effect storytelling through art therapy had on young refugee children. As much as I would have loved to create a distinctive art therapy project, I am not qualified, and it is not my place to assume that all of these refugee girls need a therapeutic project. Instead, I chose to express my poster project as strictly a project of art expression, which every child could benefit from regardless of their background, while incorporating aspects I learned from my research into my prompt and questions to promote thought.
To shape my project, I created a worksheet that prompted the girls to think about the two words, communityand home. In my prompt, I simply explained the broad meanings of these two concepts to jumpstart their thinking and to possibly lead them intovarious directions of ideas. When I chose my prompt of “what the words community and home mean to you,” I intended it to be as open ended as possible, allowing the girls to define these words for themselves and interpret them from any time in their life, whether it be the home they live in now, their home in their past country, or just somewhere they feel safe and supported such as the North Side Learning Center.
As I briefly gave them some ideas to start thinking about, I had them iterate quick definitions of these words to see what they were thinking, or if I had more explaining to do. I was shocked at their definitions of these two words, as they were much deeper and thoughtful than I expected for such a young age. They were stating words such as “environment,” “culture,” and “diversity,” and explained to me why these words were meaningful to the concepts of communityand home. The next section of my worksheet prompted the children to come up with three words they thought of when they heard their chosen word. Working with these girls and helping them spell out difficult words, this was the moment I knew this project was going to be successful. I realized how much thought they were putting into their responses and how they were beginning to uncover the meaning of these concepts in their lives. The next question prompted them to write a few sentences describing what their chosen word meant to them. The final question on the worksheet asked them to write down the colors that they thought of when they think of the meanings of their chosen word. This not only
enabled the girls to think about what colors they wanted to include in their illustration, but it also allowed them to associate a color with a mood, feeling, or concept. After they completed the worksheet, I instructed them to illustrate on the back of their paper an image or scene of what their chosen word meant to them. By going through the process of developing their ideas through the worksheet, it enabled them to think about their unique definition of the word and create anartistic piece based off of that. After I collected all of the worksheets, I scanned all of their hand drawn illustrations, put them into Adobe Illustrator, and turned their artwork into digitized posters. When digitizing these posters, my goal was to simplify the girls’ drawings through vectors while still maintaining the authenticity of their original work. I made the decisions of cleaning up the lines and colors. However, I did not change the appearance of overall image the girls created.
At first, it was challenging getting everyone to cooperate to participate in the project (because they have short attention spans), but with the help of their teacher, I was able to collect a beautiful worksheet and art piece from every girl in the class. Also, once I was able to get the girls to start, they became very excited about the intelligent ideas they were coming up with and the pictures they were drawing.
Once I completed graphically digitizing the work of the elementary-school girls, I printed each individual piece as an 11x17 glossy poster. I printed two copies of each: one to keep at the North Side Learning Center to be displayed in the hallway and at their annual dinner, and one for the girls to take back home to their families. I truly realized how successful this project was when I presented the final printed posters to the girls during my last volunteer experience. When they first caught a glimpse of their transformed work, their faces lit up and the entire classroom broke out into excited screaming. At first, I thought that the girls would only view it as an art project but watching them process their ideas and thoughts throughout the worksheet made me realize what about their community or home was meaningful to them, wherever they may find them in their lives. At such a young age, these girls have probably experienced more challenging circumstances than I could ever imagine, so watching them identify and define what a community or home meant to them was so special and eye opening. It was also extremely special to me to be able to share my passion with these girls and ultimately create something exciting for them that will also be so meaningful to the North Side Learning Center as a whole. The most challenging component of this project was coming up with the delivery method: how to create a project the girls would be excited about while having it simultaneously be meaningful, expressive, and honest. I tailored this project to portray the purpose of the North Side Learning Center, as a place where these refugee children can be themselves, feel safe and supported, and comfortably adjust to the American education system. It prompted them to think about these safe and comfortable places in their lives, while being able to express it through an artistic way. My goal was also to expose them to different art forms and how they can be intertwined, for example, transforming their hand-drawings into graphic illustrations on the computer. Through a graphic form, this project taught these girls how to have a voice in the world through art. It also taught them the power of words, and when emphasized in type on a poster, can truly portray the importance of an idea or concept. Beside the effect this project had on these girls, it also tremendously impacted me. It enabled me to give a new type of meaning to my artwork in a way that truly reached other people and was not only a reflection of myself and my own ideas. It made a part of my life I am so passionate about even more special, and I would be exhilarated to create more projects like this one.