Whimsical Masterpieces: New Perspectives on Partnerships Between an Artist and Schools

• In Event: 65.042 - Arts partnerships and innovative projects to promote cultural awareness in education

Abstract

Painter John Donato utilizes partnerships as a means of creating sustainable learning communities through the collaboration of artists and the educational system. Through the process of creating, the partnerships position participants to share experience and develop personal connections to the material. This leaves a visual imprint of all the emotions, activities, and nuances of the experience within the artistic process, bringing students to a new awareness of self, community, context, and culture. Donato views these students as a “family” of artists – steeped in relationships with materials, the environment, their peers, faculty, and their community – practicing and mastering visual arts skills while developing art and cultural awareness. For every partnership, Donato makes learning visible through what he refers to as “community muralling”. Illustrations, words, arrows situate all participants in partnership as co-learners engaging in a visual dialogue, exploring curiosity and wonder, while making meaning of the entire experience.

The artist-school partnership offers benefits for all of those involved. The presence of an artist in a school illustrates the value of community collaboration especially in terms of resourcefulness. For example, during a collaborative school and park mural project, Donato created opportunities for families, friends, teachers, and board members to participate in the project with the students. This created a sense of ownership connecting the school with the community. For artists, the partnership creates a new understanding of how participants can influence others to appreciate and use art as an agent of change. This type of empowerment creates new possibilities for artists to rise above the conventional stigma of self-centered practitioners to sustainable and necessary community educators.

We, as the artist and the researcher tell the story of partnership, using a bricolage of narrative (Clandinin & Connelly, 2004), phenomenology (Van Manen, 1990, 2014), and portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Hoffman Davis, 1997). Our purpose is to rethink power and positioning of artist, child/student, the construct of school, and community as well as arts practices within the school and community. Data collection includes document review, active interviews with the artist, and narrative writing by the artist.
While this study is only beginning, we believe when considering the amount of creative bandwidth local artists embody, combined with the extensive knowledge of educators and community members, the possibilities for innovation are boundless. These innovations could influence how partnerships are developed and enacted, how arts teaching is practiced, how the capabilities of children/students are viewed by a community, and how the construct of school might be rethought if arts and arts partnership are central to teaching and learning. We believe the benefits of partnerships would ripple far beyond the educational benefits and flow into the local and global community.

Authors

• Jeanne Marie Iorio, Victoria University - Melbourne

• John Donato, JohnDonatoArt