As our society evolves and our conversations complexify, more and more people are beginning to recognize the multifarious nature of identity and its many subsets: race, language, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, to name a few. Some of these carry more weight than others, sometimes externally, such as we are seeing right now with the case of race, and other times internally, such as one's belief in God, perhaps.
In an ever increasingly binaried world, it's imperative to address the complexity of identity and to be open to and engaged in conversations about what certain conflicted identities mean for individuals and communities. The ability to critically identify and analyze conflicting “identities,” to be able to listen to and respect multiple narratives is critical to a better future and that sort of social, emotional, and analytical training must start at a young age.
Imagine if school children grew comfortable asking the questions: whose history are we learning? Whose narrative are we reading? What are the other sides to this story? How does representation shape perception?
This is a proposal for a curriculum that would reimagine and revive the relationship between cultural institutions and community youth.
Timeline: Each week-long session would focus on a single exhibition and would include approximately 8 Middle School children (7th - 8th grade).
The curriculum could also be offered to college students, in a smaller group.
Agenda: Each student would be given a chance to explore a collection , prompted with the following questions:
Whose history is represented in this collection
What types of pieces do you see
Each student would be asked to pick a piece from the collection and answer as many of the following questions as they can:
What is the name of the piece?
Where is it from?
What time period is it from?
Who made the piece?
What pieces is it placed next to? Why do you think its displayed this way?
If you had to create a new exhibit, with this piece in it, what would it be?
And most importantly, are there representations of identity within this piece? Do they conflict or complement each other? Why or why not?
The students would come back together and share their findings with the rest of the group and discuss, prompted to think about which questions they could answer, which questions they couldn’t, and why. Then, the student would be given the opportunity to create their own piece of art which highlights the piece they’ve chosen and what conflicting identities are at play. Either each week can focus on a different form of projection (photography, film, writing, drawing, collage, etc.) or it could be up to the student. At the end of the program, all of the creations would be put on display, adjacent to the piece within the exhibition and open for the public to see.