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Youth & Schools Multidisciplinary Projects
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Sarah (far right) collaborating with teaching artists Katie Basile, Ryan Conarro, & Tina Harness on a multidisciplinary public work exploring identity & traditional indigenous stories, bringing together 100 Alaska Native Yup’ik young people with stories, visual art, song, digital media, & Native dance.
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Sarah led visual design for an interdisciplinary performance project featuring students from nine villages in the Lower Kuskokiwm District celebrating Alaska's 50th year as a state. Her work included painting/collaging a 160 sq ft. backdrop with 100 K-12 students in Kasigluk, Alaska, a Yupik Alaska Native community. Collaborators for this project include Stephen Blanchett, Ryan Conarro,and Project Pilinguat.
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Sarah worked with A. Phillip Randolph students in grades 9th-12th in their first community collaborative job opportunity: creating a mural promoting the Giraffe Path, a 6.6 mile urban trail that connects the Cloisters to Central Park. Students polled community, designed the mural, & painted collaboratively.
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Julian led students K-5 in finding rhyme & slant rhyme to write an original song incorporating their caregivers’ responses to a family engagement questionnaire asking, “What is a positive trait of your child?” Answers (& therefore lyrics) are in English, Spanish and German.
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Arts-Integrated Curriculum & Project-based Learning
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Leading classroom teachers from all over the state to collaborate on a cultural collaboration mural for the Tribal Youth Center in the Sheet’ká area of Southeast AK, Sarah holds a drum as a visual reference. Charlie Skultka, Jr., a Traditional Arts Specialist for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, collaborated with Sarah to offer his expertise on formline design.
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High School educator Ms. Lowder outlines her choices of ELA core skill goals during a professional development workshop to co-generate goals for what the collaborative art processes in the school’s upcoming residency would be.
For their project “Heroes & Talents within Our Environment”, 9th-12th grade students created six collaborative paintings on panels & individualized mosaic pavers to beautify the school exterior along the entrance walkway. During critique, students noticed objects gathered from the local environment their fellow classmates used in their mosaic pavers.
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In Collaboration with a Public Health Grant from Colombia Univ, high schoolers integrated public health designs into a mural.
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Arts as Curriculum
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Professional Development & Coaching
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Funded by a Cultural Collaboration Grant, Sarah led a professional development workshop for educators K-12 in White Mountain AK, emphasizing inclusivity strategies & trauma-informed teaching strategies. Educators played an integral role in collaborating with students to make a 350 square foot permanent installation on a chain link fence.
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Sarah leads classroom professionals in taking a mid-project break to demonstrate incorporating moments of mindfulness, movement, and breath during their PD workshop on arts integration & curriculum design for the
NYC DOE 2024-25 Arts for Multilingual Learners Grant.
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Educators collaborated through collage exercises to frame academic goals for the school wide continuous narrative project visually interpreting 'The Great Lessons' (a Montessori framework for students to learn the “big picture” of the world).
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Julian introduces the magic of a MIDI keyboard for a teacher workshop in integrating media into classroom projects for students 6-8th. Teachers also worked with Julian to consider how to integrate common technology tools that are available in their schools into their classroom projects.
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With the green screen, Julian photographs teachers , as they investigate making “line” with their bodies during their PD workshop on arts integration & curriculum design for the NYC DOE 2024-25 Arts for Multilingual Learners Grant.
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Sarah worked with educators to identify opportunities to offer more choice & flexibility in materials for easy classroom arts projects as a de-escalation strategy in trauma-informed teaching.
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Curriculum Design
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Family Engagement / Parent Workshops
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Located on the Seward Peninsula and the only inland village on the Bering Strait, elders & community members gathered for community workshops to cut out & paint wooden shapes designed by the youth. A truly all ages collaboration, Sarah worked with all who wanted to add to the shapes that later adorned the fence separating the village school from the rest of the village.
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Community members of White Mtn, an Iġaluŋmiut (Fish River tribe) Inupiat village, worked together to paint bright colorful shapes to span the fence outside of the new White Mtn School. This effort was important to the 200 person village as recently the former school burned down. Sarah additionally collaborated with K-12 students to make designs that community members could add their mark to, promoting that this new school (& largest community building in the village) is for everyone.
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Community Workshops and Projects
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Teaching artist Julian Bozeman facilitated indigo dyeing for an all-ages workshop. Participants tried their hand at “shibori”, and learned that the word shibori comes from the Japanese verb shiboru ["to wring, squeeze, and press"]. Choices in technique included tying, knotting, bunching, or binding to secure the fabric, and then dyeing it to create patterns.
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Sarah worked with the City Council of Juneau to design a 5-panel mosaic to hang on the otherwise blank retaining wall at Capital Park. Prior to this project, no public art adorned Capital Park, which is in the heart of the capital city of Alaska. Sarah invited K-6 students of Juneau Community Charter School to partiopate inthe creation of the mosaic, as the park is a place they frequently visit. The imagery highlights the surrounding mountains & landscape of the Tongass National Forest.
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Awarded a Percent for Art project, Sarah painted an 18 x 19 ft mural in the covered basketball court at the The Zach Gordon Youth Center. The youth center is a free, drop-in facility for youth of all ages in the capital of Alaska, so with this in mind, opportunities for youth of all ages to add their part to the mural was integrated into the process. The mural features a raven, which is a commonly seen bird in Juneau and also a culturally important bird to Alaska's Native people.
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Artists Julian Bozeman & John Crowe lead a workshop for ages 13-adult on basics of working with analog & digital video tools to include cameras, video mixers, video processors, CRT displays systems, & projectors. Participants explored working collaboratively with video feedback. The multiple stations of equipment were chained together in a loop, so participants’ individual experiments impacted & responded to imagery created by other participants around the room in real time.
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Sarah led Juneau teens in collaboration with AWARE’s prevention team in creating a place-based mural series entitled ‘I Choose Respect’ depicting the local bridge, a fishing boat, raven, downtown, the Mendenhall Glacier, & the mountains! The mural has words & actions written by Juneau community members of all ages during workshops at the Univ. of AK & the Juneau Arts & Humanities council. Pictured: The hanging at KTOO public radio station in downtown Juneau.
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In response to the overnight shutdown, Sarah & Julian launched an online 84-session project. Each week, more than 80 artists, ages 3-72, tuned in from AK, CA, FL, GA, HI, MA, MT, NY, PR, & SC. They learned drawing techniques, & shared a journal entry by answering the weekly 'Dialogue Time Question’ for the “Drawings & Thoughts” journal video, helping them feel less alone in an otherwise isolating time.
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