A Creative Ask - Your Body is Inside a Curriculum
I've been writing lesson plans for next year in a kind of fever dream. Or a literal fever dream? (I have COVID). Pages and pages of exercises I think my kids will enjoy in the fall, to show them that art isn't just something that happens to other people. I am dead-ass making collages and lists and like … charts? The irony isn't lost on me—trying to systematize the unsystematic. That has been the biggest struggle of transitioning from my personal practice to teaching. I obviously can’t tell the kids that my art making process is drinking some weed tincture, stapling canvas to walls, going into a fugue state while youtube videos of folks retelling Degrassi episodes play the in background.
I don't actually know if any of this shit works.
I can theorize all I want about what will spark something in a sixteen-year-old who'd rather be literally anywhere else, but theory and practice are different creatures. This year we dropped three projects because the kids were miserable. Now I know what DOESN’T work but I still don’t know what DOES tbh.
I’m going to TRY something but I need your help. My brain keeps going “it’s fine, it’s just creative archaeology and everyone is going to want to do it bc it’s cool”. If you reply to this email, I'll send you a workbook that is a truncated version of the new units I’m writing. Your job is to follow the process, or walk around it, or completely ignore my instructions and follow whatever thread catches your attention instead. You’ll come away with a completed project I can use as an exemplar for my students. All of this is useful data.
I want your process photos and your finished photos and reflections on the parts of the process that are way way too confusing or vague.
I want to show my students that adults still make things. That creative exploration is natural and different for everyone. And as I’m sure you’ve heard: the kids can’t read. Something I have discovered though is that they have amazing visual literacy. I want exemplars from different artists so that they have a rich collection of the same project done in different ways and they can really LOOK at them. Your work becomes part of how I talk about art with them.
If this sounds like something you'd be into, just reply to this email. I'm thinking I'll send out the first two workbooks this week.
No pressure if this isn't your thing right now! BUT BUT BUT if you're looking for some creative direction, this might be fun. It’s an experiment. IDK!
The mining metaphor from my last letter keeps returning to me. We're always extracting something: attention, creativity, time—but maybe this time we can mine together, see what we uncover when we dig into these prompts with intention instead of obligation.
Let me know if you want in. And as always, I love you.
Liah Bean