Engaging Artistically-Inclined Urban Youth
At a meeting this week I learned about Juxtaposition Arts, a new community organization connected with the Service and Engagement efforts in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.
According to their web site, Juxtaposition Arts is
"A non-profit youth focused visual arts organization engaging audiences through its community collaborations, studio arts workshops, public mural programs and special festivals and art exhibitions.
Two visual artists founded the organization in 1995 as a means to engage artistically inclined urban youth in high quality creative experiences in ways that are practical, relevant, and life changing."
I did a little further exploration, and found that Juxtaposition Arts is one of community partners in the course Landscape Architecture 1202, Making the Mississippi, taught by Patrick Nunnally. According to the course web site,
"This course examines how urban communities in the Upper Mississippi region are reconnecting to the river. Students are given a pragmatic sense of what people do in planning and then apply their research through community engagement. The final project generates ideas in riverfront planning for the community organizations involved and students are left with a wealth of knowledge and experience in community planning and design along the Mississippi.
Community engagement
Students work in teams on a community design project associated with a local partner organization. This project makes up thirty percent of the course and incorporates material covered in the other sixty percent. Community partners speak with students at the beginning of the project and attend a final review of student presentations. Additional fieldwork exercises focus on what has already been accomplished in riverfront planning."
Juxtaposition Arts points up several important lessons:
- There are other ways than STEM to involve urban youth in college-related programs.
- Service-learning activities can connect with community issues in many imaginative ways.
- Taking advantage of geographical specifics can connect communities, local governments, and educational institutions in novel and useful ways.