More than 500 students have an art museum experience through the Brooks ABC Program
Guest blog post by Kate Renner, Brooks School Programs Coordinator.
On Thursday, April 5, Brooks completed our final museum visits of this year’s Art Builds Creativity (ABC) program … and we sure are going to miss these Fourth Graders over the summer!
During their final visit students enjoyed a tour of our special exhibition – African-Print Fashion Now! – followed by a language arts activity and art-making session in our studio classroom.
A huge "thank you" to Melissa Bridgman and Elisabeth Rhodes, the dedicated teaching artists who worked with these students from October 2017 through April 2018.
This year ABC reached more than 500 Mid-South students attending Cornerstone Denver (Achievement School District), Frayser (Achievement School District), St. Augustine (Jubilee Catholic Schools), New Hope Christian Academy, Shelby Oaks Elementary (Shelby County Schools), Vollentine Elementary (Shelby County Schools), and Brewster Elementary (Shelby County Schools).
Art Builds Creativity is a multi-visit, museum-school collaboration for fourth-grade students, established at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in 1979. Lessons are aligned with grade level appropriate benchmarks and seek to provide fourth grade students with a multi-visit museum experience, to use art as a vehicle for teaching necessary 21st century skills (creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration), and to empower classroom teachers to integrate art and higher order thinking skills into core subject lesson planning. ABC consists of lessons taught by a contract teaching artist at the museum, a visit to the school classroom by the instructor, and a lesson delivered in class by the students’ classroom teacher. Lessons are thematic and feature topics that engage participants in discussion, writing, and art making.
Click here to learn more about the Brooks ABC Program.
Keep an eye out for exciting changes to next year’s program!
Kate Renner
School Programs Coordinator