from left to right 4/08: Opportunity School students Zac Mills, Louie Stevenson, Chase Wilson, Tara Cochran, Derek Lindell, Josh Starr and (not pictured) Joey Florian, Kenny Napier & Josh Vestal, worked with artists Steven Brown & Anne Cornell to design and paint the garage wall on the alley behind the old Park Hotel lot in the center of downtown Coshocton.
When writing about the project, Napier wrote, "We're not just bringing [people's] attention here for a pretty picture. We're doing it to get their attention to the lot and have the art explain why we got their attention. "
The Opportunity School is an e-based community school. The Pomerene Center has run a for-credit media arts program with the school annually since it opened in 2001. Pictured to the right, is flimmaker Jack Walker who is working with Cornell, Brown and the students.
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Why Arts Education?
In his latest book, FIVE MINDS FOR THE FUTURE, Howard Gardner defines 5 ways of thinking that will command a premium in the years ahead: 3 of the 5 are directly related to creative/artistic thinking:
- “the synthesizing mind: ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others
- the creating mind: capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions, and phenomena
- the respectful mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups”
In their September 2, 2007 Boston Globe article Art for our sake: School arts classes matter more than ever - but not for the reasons you think http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/02/art_for_our_sake/
Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland argue that the arts teach important ways of seeing, imagining, inventing, and thinking. “Those who have learned the lessons of the arts, - how to see new patterns, how to learn from mistakes, and how to envision solutions - are the ones likely to come up with the novel answers needed most for the future.”
Howard Gardner is a well-known educational theorist and author of the classic work Frames of Mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland are members of Project Zero, a research group co-directed by Howard Gardner from 1972-2000.
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