Gallery

Picturing Peace

Link to Picturing Peace website

The Picturing Peace project has been supported by ArtsBridge America at three ArtsBridge campuses: Lawrence University of Wisconsin, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. The outgrowth of the Picturing Peace project was designed to help youg students take photographs of peace and related concepts. These pictures represent the work by 10-12 year old pupils after intensive training in photography, discussion and poetry writing by young people about the many meanings of peace for them.

With the arrival of digital cameras and the precocity of children in leading the technological revolution, young people at last have the tools to take creative photographs. Another development in K-12 education contributes to this trend. Now the arts, long considered a healthy, if not intellectual activity, are thought to help students learn across the curriculum. Combining photographs and poetry in these students' artworks about social ideas represents a cutting edge trend in education.

Look Again

Click here for the exhibition video (HI-Res)

Click here for the exhibition video (Low-Res)

Look Again consists of three components: an ArtsBridge classroom project; a research project; and a culminating exhibition at the Beall Center for Art and Technology. A CD-ROM of Look Again is available. Please contact us to request one.

The Look Again ArtsBridge Project
Three classes of Orange County elementary and secondary pupils were involved in a unique, arts-in-education project employing digital photography as a means to engage complex vocabulary and to promote literacy development. One of the primary objectives of Look Again was to use photography to augment students' vocabulary word knowledge. Word knowledge refers to being able to provide verbal definitions of words, to understand multiple meanings of words, and to visualize "doing things with words." At the same time instruction in the art of photography developed the students' skills in perception, composition, and expression. The combined approach created a reciprocal relationship between word knowledge and photographic skill, deepening the students' understanding of the differing powers of images and words to capture and convey meaning.

In the Look Again project, elementary and middle school students were given a list of highly evocative vocabulary words, such as "mysterious," "parallel," "amorphous," "complex," "community," "peace," and "symmetry." The pupils were then outfitted with digital cameras and invited to capture and interpret these concepts as visual images. We anticipated that pupils would encounter multiple meanings and contextual uses of vocabulary terms through their digital photographs. Pupils would then explore these meanings and perceptions with other students, teachers, and university scholars through creative writing assignments, culminating in this multimedia presentation and discussion of their work at the Beall Center in June, 2003.

The Look Again Research Project

The research project examined impacts of the project in the following areas:

• Pupils' sense of aesthetics and interest in concrete and abstract images;
• Pupils' proficiency with traditional and digital photographic media;
• Pupils' abilities to interrelate specific vocabulary terms with digital photography;
• Development and refinement of pupils' abilities to work with language creatively and to explore word usage in a variety of contexts; and
• Relationships between ArtsBridge scholars, teachers, and pupils during the course of the project.

Findings from research on Look Again will be disseminated through articles in professional and lay journals, and will also be summarized on the ArtsBridge America website.

The Look Again Exhibition
The aesthetic results of the project were on exhibition at the Beall Center through June 9 through June 13, 2003. The Look Again exhibition includes large screen digital projections of images taken by the students (presented by school), as well as digital prints of award-winning entries. The awards include recognition by the Hewlett-Packard Foundation for innovation, the Citizen Peacebuilding Program for images illustrating peace and tolerance, the Christensen Foundation for artistic merit, and ArtsBridge awards for combined text and image.

Credits and Acknowledgements

ArtsBridge America gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Hewlett Packard Corporation, the Christensen Fund, UC Irvine's Citizen Peacebuilding Program, and The Bren Foundation.

ArtsBridge Scholars:Janelle Eagle, Amber Kandarian, and Stacey Sobelman

ArtsBridge Host Teachers: Linda Erickson, Beniy Waisanen, and Tyra Demateis

Project Conception & Research Design: Robert J. Beck, Ph.D.

Project Research: Morgan Appel, MBA

Project Mentor: Linda Southwell, MFA

University of California, Irvine
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