Our work with schools and the community is designed to help ensure that all children have successful experiences as they grow up in the community.
September 2013: Masks, Music, Movement and Monologues Performance
Identity and the Artist is a multi-media art program which was established at The Rockwell in 2003 for incoming High School Learning Center students and is in its 10th year.
Students gain confidence in themselves.
And teachers gain an understanding of how a museum can be a resource for academic work and personal growth through the study of art.
This project begins with an in-depth tour of the Museum art collections with a focus on images of nature. Students create writing projects and artwork at the Museum that explore their identity. There is a culminating performance by students called Masks, Music, Movement and Monologues.
The Identity and the Artist program at the Museum Students study how artists in the collection reveal aspects of their cultural and personal identity through their artwork. Over the course of six (three-hour sessions) students create a paper-maché mask (under the direction of a professional artist) which personifies an element of nature (e.g., wind, rain, thunder or fire).
Students then write a monologue for the mask and choreograph a movement piece accompanied by professional and student musicians. The culmination of the program is a performance and reception for an invited audience of family and community members.
The program, in particular the culminating performance, provides a unique opportunity for the parents of the students to gain insight about their child and to understand how the community is working together to create valuable learning experiences for their children.
Here is a video of the 2012 performance:
http://www.rockwellmuseum.org/High-School-Learning-Center.html